Province in bid for foreign investment
Skweyiya: ANC leaders pay tribute to legacy of a stalwart Delegates to spread message that KZN is ripe for investors
ANC VETERAN Pallo Jordan yesterday described the heartache of his former cabinet colleague, Dr Zola Skweyiya, after discovering, upon his return from exile, that his home town of Luyolo, in Simon’s Town, near Cape Town, no longer existed.
Jordan, a former arts and culture minister, said he had known Skweyiya for six decades as they had both grown up in Cape Town.
Luyolo, like its more famous mixed-race neighbourhoods – Sophiatown in Johannesburg, umkhumbane in Durban and District Six in Cape Town – was razed by the apartheid rulers under the Group Areas Act after Simon’s Town was declared a whites-only area.
Jordan said Skweyiya’s visit to Simon’s Town after his return from exile in the early 1990s was a bitter moment for the former social development and public service and administration minister.
Pallo, a former ANC national executive committee member, described Skweyiya (whose peers called him Nzwana, a Xhosa term for a handsome young man), as a solid comrade.
“Nzwana was a very modest, unassuming person, given to vanity,” he said.
Jordan said Skweyiya did his work quietly and was a private person. One of his legacies to the South African people was the comprehensive social security system that he helped to set up.
Skweyiya died at Kloof Hospital in Tshwane on April 11, a few days before he would have turned 76. Hundreds of mourners attended the service, including President Cyril Ramaphosa, former president Thabo Mbeki, several cabinet ministers and Struggle stalwarts.
In his not tribute, Umkhonto we Sizwe veteran Zolile Nqose said he first met Skweyiya in Retreat, Cape Town, where Skweyiya went to school.
“He was very sensitive, especially to people who had nothing. He was a leader who needed no policy to make him work,” said Nqose.
Ramaphosa described Skweyiya as an ambassador of goodwill who founded the government’s Batho Pele ethos, established during his tenure as public service and administration minister under Nelson Mandela.
Skweyiya was buried at the Pretoria East Cemetery yesterday.
FOLLOWING President Cyril Ramaphosa’s trip to the UK to woo investors, MEC for Economic Development Sihle Zikalala and ethekwini mayor Zandile Gumede will undertake a similar journey in June.
The back-to-back, highlevel engagements with international investors, dubbed “Durban Kwazulu-natal Investment Day”, which was given the green light last year, is set for June 8 in London.
Bongani Tembe, spokesperson for the Department of Economic Development, said the trip was aimed at telling international investors that KZN was fertile ground for investments.
“We undertook a similar trip last year and we are seeing the fruits of it now in the form of investment into the province,” he said.
Tembe confirmed investments from companies in Scotland and China were the spinoffs from 2017’s efforts.
Zikalala and Gumede will be accompanied by an entourage of Durban business heavyweights like Vivian Reddy of Edison Corporation and the developer of the Oceans umhlanga precinct, Michael Deighton, chief executive of Tongaat-hulett, and Moses Tembe, co-chairperson of the KZN Growth Coalition.
Mthunzi Gumede, spokesperson for the ethekwini mayor, said: “The delegation will provide investors with local knowledge of the investment environment, promote quicker turnaround times for the relevant investor application processes and provide an ongoing foreign investor aftercare service.”
The drive to lure investors into the province and the city of Durban gave birth to a new unit, “Invest Durban”.
Gumede said: “The leadership of the city wants to ensure that there are valuable linkages from the new foreign investments into our local SMMES and community participation groups. We want to see new investments being spread across the city, including our townships and rural areas,” he said.
Invest Durban worked closely with all local, provincial and national spheres of government and promoted local projects by giving support to the ongoing relationship with key foreign investors through official processes, he added.
Projects such as the Dube Tradeport, the multi-billionrand Point Development project and the Richards Bay Industrial Zone, which have received more than R10 billion in investments, would be used to entice potential investors to KZN, said Tembe.
Ebrahim Patel, former president of the Minara Chamber of Commerce, said this was a positive step as the UK was the economic the world.
“It also comes at an opportune time after President Cyril Ramaphosa visited London this week. We fully support the mayor and we hope this will translate into investment for Durban,” he said.
Ramaphosa struck an R850 million investment deal with the UK this week during the 25th Commonwealth heads of government meeting.
However, Ramaphosa was gunning for a further $100bn investment into the country in the next five years.
But economist Dawie Roodt of the Efficient Group was not convinced. He cited the government’s policy direction on the issue of expropriation of land without compensation as a stumbling block that would push investors away.
Ramaphosa’s envoy, now called the “Dream Team”, comprised former finance minister Trevor Manuel, former deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas, Phumzile Langeni, chairperson of Afropulse capital of Group Proprietary Limited, Ramaphosa’s economic adviser, Trudi Makhaya, and Jacko Maree, the chairperson of Liberty Holdings Limited and Liberty Group Limited.
Roodt said Ramaphosa had the right team but he needed to back that team with the right policies that would convince investors that South Africa was a safe country to invest in.
Ramaphosa was confident that his team struck the right chord with potential investors. He said the country was on a road to economic recovery as the government was creating a conducive environment to boost investor confidence.
Ramaphosa’s trip came amid the International Monetary Fund (IMF) raising the country’s growth forecast from 0.9% in 2018 and 2019, to 1.5% and 1.7%, respectively.
Roodt said he was not surprised by the positive growth and attributed it to the changing of the guard which saw Ramaphosa taking over from former president Jacob Zuma.