By Bonginkosi Masiwa

In March 2007, Buffalo City Municipality held its much-anticipated City Development Strategy (CDS) conference and finally unveiled the city’s long-term development plans.  Executive Mayor Zintle Peter described the CDS as a long-term expenditure strategy and committed the municipality to aligning its budget with CDS priorities. The quality and inclusiveness of local governance, the need to spread the benefits of economic growth and the imperative for the city’s civic, political and business leaders to act in unison with its development strategy were also stressed at the conference.

The CDS process has consistently highlighted the balance that should exist between attracting new investment and the need to retain the established businesses in the city and secure existing levels of employment. The CDS intervention has drawn attention to the few thriving industries such as the automobile industry i.e. Daimler Chrysler (DCSA), which is the pillar of the city’s economy. Representatives of business and other sectors called on the city’s leadership to provide clarity on the nature of the "interventions" that would flow from the CDS exercise and to state exactly who the the intended beneficiaries would be.

General CDS consensus has already been secured regarding the importance of upgrading and modernising the city’s infrastructure to keep it at least on a par with that of other successful South African cities. Buffalo City needs to lose its "slumtown" image and begin competing with other coastal cities like Durban. Future public investment in the city will start with a R250 million loan from the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA). According to Municipal Manager, Gaster Sharpley, R50 million will go to a targeted infrastructure programme, R90 million to the upgrading and maintenance of municipal plant and fleet (including fire and rescue vehicles) and R110 million to the city's capital investment programme.

Strong calls were made for the upgrading of the R72 road that links East London and Port Elizabeth and the N2 corridor to the Transkei. The CDS also appealed for a rail service linking Buffalo City to Johannesburg, but noted candidly that Transnet has not made any serious commitment in this regard.  The much-debated development of the East London port to accommodate bigger vessels was again mooted as the only answer to increasing the volume of goods that the harbour could handle. This R5 billion investment is emerging as increasingly critical to retaining the confidence of the automobile and related supplier industries. The upgraded port is mooted as essential for DCSA to compete with other Mercedes Benz vehicle plants around the world.  Putting the East London port on the national map and promoting its usage to increase trade with the world is at the heart of the CDS strategy. Currently Buffalo City is at risk of losing a great deal of investment and national recognition to the other east coast ports of Port Elizabeth and Coega. Coega in particular features very prominently in national development programmes and is clearly regarded as the regional priority by the country’s leadership.

Lack of skills and capacity in the region and especially at municipal level, has long been regarded as a constraint to investment.  The CDS suggests that the answer may lie in the growing number of universities in the city and calls for engagement with the universities to produce more graduates in those fields in which the city experiences a critical need for skills.  Whether the CDS will significantly impact on the city’s second economy and the poor is a matter of speculation, however the existence of a significant potential tourism economy and hitherto under-exploited facilities like the beachfront suggests some potential for spillover benefits. The CDS has made careful reference to other government strategies such as the Provincial Growth and Development Plan and the National Spatial Development Programme, however it has yet to show that it has registered on the agenda of the key national agencies that could provide the public investment needed. 

The Local Government Transformer, April/May 2007