Planning for local economic development in spaces of despair: Key trends in South Africa’s ‘distressed areas’

Abstract

South Africa’s distressed areas are the country’s spaces of despair. Alongside national government interventions designed to target spatial inequalities, there are Local Economic Development policy interventions taking place. The objective in this article is to analyse the state of current local economic development policy proposals in the municipalities that are categorised as part of South Africa’s distressed areas. After reviewing the roots and persistence of socio-economic and spatial inequalities in South Africa, attention turns to dissect the key challenges and directions of local economic development policy and planning across the distressed areas. The local economic development policy foci in distressed areas are described and set against a national profile for local economic development. Overall, it is argued that given the weak state of local economic development in South Africa, its constraints and limited successes, minimal prospects exist for local economic development plans across the distressed areas to impact substantially the structural nature of spatial inequalities in South Africa. New policy frameworks for local economic development in these areas are, therefore, needed.

Keywords

distressed areas local economic development South Africa spatial inequality

Introduction

The concept of ‘geographically uneven development’ is an embedded theoretical construct within spatial economic analysis and discourse (Buscher and Arsel, 2012). As argued by Harvey (2006, 2011), it represents a key element in the perpetuation of capitalism and is associated with the selective privileging of different economic spaces. The recognition of this reality has sparked renewed interest in policies of regional and local development and conceptualisations of ‘new regionalism’ which underlie new thinking about space and economic development (Rogerson, 2009; Yeung, 2009). Within the context of South Africa, geographically uneven development has been the outcome of the coalescence of selective economic and political processes which overlay pre-existing geographical and historical processes of marginalisation. The most enduring inequalities are reflected in the spaces of despair which are now described by national government as ‘the distressed areas’ of South Africa. Nevertheless, the existence of massive spatial inequalities across the country was recognised in academic discourse as far back as the 1970s and 1980s with Board et al. (1970) and Fair (1982) identifying the Homeland areas as the de facto ‘periphery’ of South Africa’s space economy which was dominated by the urban ‘cores’. Although the changing definition of the distressed areas have since expanded their scope beyond the former Homelands, the greatest challenges around spatial development in South Africa surround these marginalised spaces of poverty and deprivation.

Following the end of apartheid, the first democratic government initially shied away from spatially selective economic interventions because of their potential association with apartheid policies (Oranje, 2010). Instead, the government in 1994 initially pursued a national strategy called the Reconstruction and Development Programme which sought to both respond to entrenched racially based inequalities through programmes which strove to achieve socio-economic redress nationally and, in parallel, to grow the national economy (Republic of South Africa (RSA), 1995). In 1996, following international pressure, this programme was partially supplanted by a neo-liberal macro-economic strategy called the Growth, Employment and Redistribution policy (RSA, 1996). These effectively aspatial strategies laid the basis for a period of strong national economic growth and partially addressed inherited racial inequalities but ultimately did little to impact the nation’s deeply entrenched spatial inequalities. Economic activities and associated growth continued to polarise around South Africa’s economic core regions to the detriment of more marginal spaces and the ‘lagging regions’, the former Homelands in particular (Nel and Rogerson, 2009). In recent years, the government has acknowledged the persistence of such spatial inequalities and the need to address the persistent developmental backlogs (National Planning Commission, 2011a; The Presidency, 2011).

As argued elsewhere, these areas now are targeted as recipients for significant national government assistance in terms of infrastructural investment, rural development interventions (including tourism) and support for small businesses (including co-operatives) (Rogerson, 2015a; Rogerson and Nel, 2016). The targeted distressed areas exhibit a close overlap with the former apartheid Homelands where deeply entrenched structural inequalities endure and path dependency, to date, has not been broken (Turok, 2010a, 2011a). Whilst it is too early to see or anticipate the outcomes of these interventions, one strategic intervention which was applied in these areas soon after the democratic transition is Local Economic Development (LED) which represents a more localised ‘place-based’ intervention than the new national strategies (Rogerson, 2014a). Since the release of the National Constitution, all local authorities in South Africa have been obliged to engage in social and economic interventions (RSA, 1996). This responsibility was reinforced by the ‘development local government’ mandate contained in the Local Government White Paper in 1998 (Department of Provincial and Local Government, 1998), and the requirements that LED form a key element in local government planning processes as legislated in terms of the Local Government Systems Act (RSA, 2001).

The nearly 20-year history of LED in the distressed areas enables an assessment to be made of the character of interventions that local governments are pursuing. The task in this article is to unravel the state of current LED policy proposals in the municipalities that are categorised as part of the distressed areas of South Africa. In terms of organisation, the next section reviews the roots and persistence of socio-economic and spatial inequalities in South Africa. Attention then turns in the major analytical part of the paper to use LED documents and Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) in order to dissect the key challenges and directions of LED policy and planning across the distressed areas. The LED policy foci in distressed areas are described and set against a national profile for LED. Overall, it is argued that given the weak state of LED in South Africa, its constraints and limited successes, minimal prospects exist for these LED plans across the distressed areas to impact substantially the structural nature of spatial inequalities in South Africa.

Geographically uneven development in South Africa: Roots and persistence

The roots of geographically uneven development in contemporary South Africa must be understood in terms of the political economy of capitalist development. The historical details of dispossession and capitalist accumulation are traced in seminal scholarly works by Wolpe (1972), Legassick (1974), Magubane (1975), Legassick and Wolpe (1976) and Bundy (1979). These researchers reveal that the deliberate confinement of African communities to particular geographical spaces was initiated during the colonial era in the 19th century. Over time, these spaces were expanded to become the de jure rural ethnic reserves first under British administration in terms of the 1913 Land Act and then under the apartheid state through the 1948 Land Act (Nel, 1999). The conditions of capital accumulation in South Africa were characterised by authoritarianism and what Legassick (1974, 1977) styles as the ‘extra-economic coercion’ of Black labour. The essential foundations for South Africa’s exploitative labour system were the ‘Native Reserves’ which were forged in colonial times but remade under apartheid. The history and making of these spaces as cheap labour reservoirs in the political economy of capitalist development in South Africa is discussed by Wolpe (1972), Magubane (1975) and Legassick (1977).

Essentially, these geographically marginal areas became cheap labour reserves fostered by colonial segregation policies and latterly reinforced by apartheid planning (Figure 1). Importantly, these rural areas functioned for reproducing migrant labour, in a context of a progressive erosion of the rural economic base (Bundy, 1979; Magubane, 1975). Indeed, historically, the settlement and mobility patterns of South Africa’s Black (African) population were moulded by migratory labour. For Wolpe (1972) and Legassick (1974) migratory labour was sustained under conditions where capital-labour contradictions existed alongside the contradiction between the South African capitalism and the ‘dependent societies’ it created. The maintenance of cheap labour supplies was inseparable from a range of state mechanisms which enforced ‘a deliberate impermanence’ into the lives of Black South Africans’ (Clark et al., 2007: 35). Coerced cheap labour power for South Africa’s mines and industries was anchored upon maintaining the oscillatory movements of (mainly male) Black labourers (Magubane, 1975). In terms of South Africa’s trajectory of capitalist development, this coercive migratory labour arrangement became the basis for the apartheid political economy. It kept wages artificially low because it enabled the externalisation of ‘reproduction costs for the labour power needed in the urban-industrial centres of the country’ (Steinbrink, 2010: 38). The system was strengthened further by the establishment of South Africa’s ‘closed city’ programmes of influx control which were fashioned so as to constrain permanent black urbanisation particularly in the country’s so-termed ‘White’ metropolitan areas.

Figure 1.

The geography of the apartheid Bantustans or homelands.

From 1948, Black South Africans progressively were stripped of their citizenship making them legally ‘citizens’ of 1 of the 10 nominally self-governing and ethically based Bantustans (Figure 1). During apartheid, these spaces of confinement experienced economic neglect, underdevelopment, forced resettlement and overcrowding. Thousands of Black South Africans were compelled to reside in the ethnically designed Homelands where access to land was severely restricted by ‘villagisation’ which encouraged a ‘transition from an agrarian to a cash-based economy that critically depended on migrant labour’ (Clark et al., 2007: 36). The Bantustans became the spaces for the ‘dumping’ in remote and often barren rural slums of formerly settled rural and urban communities from what was classified as ‘white’ South Africa. This draconian exercise in social engineering represented one of the foundations of planning for ‘separate’ ethnically based Bantustans. In terms of apartheid planning for racialised spaces, the Bantustans were encouraged to be self-styled autonomous states ‘separate’ from what was to be a mythically ‘White’ state of South Africa. During apartheid, 4 of the 10 Homelands were coaxed into sham ‘independence’, namely Transkei, Ciskei, Bophuthatswana and Venda. Independent or not, the formation of these ethnically defined spaces of underdevelopment fulfilled several economic and political objectives for the apartheid state. Above all, as both Wolpe (1972) and Steinbrink (2009) argue, oscillatory migrant labour from the Bantustans which were spatially segregated and governed in an authoritarian fashion, enabled and sustained a low-wage economy for South Africa’s urban-industrial heartland. The Homelands policy served to spatially embed poverty and disempowerment into defined geographical spaces which constituted 13% of the geographical space of the country.

With the emergence of democracy in South Africa in 1994, the former Homelands were now re-absorbed into the new dispensation of provincial, district and local governments as the most undeveloped and deprived spaces in the country. Because of the abolition of apartheid controls, it was widely assumed that circular migration between urban and rural areas would decline as people could settle now on a permanent basis close to their urban places of work in the major çore regions (Todes et al., 2010). However, this has not occurred and oscillatory migration continues to be an important dimension of the urbanisation dynamics of contemporary South Africa (Rogerson, 2014b; Steinbrink, 2010). In common with trends observed in other parts of the global South, circular migration remains a critical element in South Africa as migration flows assumed a different form because households altered their way of organising migration (Lohnert and Steinbrink, 2005; Steinbrink, 2009).

The challenge of spatial inequalities thus persisted in geographical space and on the policy agenda of the democratic state. From the mid-1990s to 2009, South Africa recorded a phase of modest economic growth, albeit the benefits of which did not accrue to all citizens. Economic mismanagement, declining standards of governance and escalating corruption at all levels of government have dogged development endeavours. Although poverty levels have fallen, largely through the expansion of state welfare by extensive social grants, many other indicators have worsened, particularly in the distressed areas (Habib, 2013; Marais, 2011). Overall, there has been an increase in social-economic inequalities nationally, which has seen the Gini coefficient rise from 0.66 in 1993 to 0.70 by 2008 (Bhorat et al., 2014). By late 2015, the unemployment rate had risen from 23% in 2007 to 25.5% with persistent rural poverty and unemployment proving an intractable challenge (Duclos and Verdier-Chouchane, 2011).

While the national picture is somewhat negative, when one analyses regional differences a far starker picture of persistent and potentially growing inequalities emerges which clearly privileges larger urban centres and leaves poor, rural areas locked into structural inequality and poverty. Incomes in the metropolitan areas are 40% higher than the rest of the country, and the rate of employment growth is double that of the rest. Metropolitan areas account for 75% of all new jobs, while small towns and rural areas only secure a 15% share. Rural areas constitute 23% of the population but only 13.5% of economic activity. By contrast, metropolitan areas accounted for 34% of population, 57% of economic activity and 58% of all jobs in 2012 (up from 53% in 2007) (Turok and Borel-Saladin, 2013). It is evident that growth continues to geographically polarise around the core regions to the detriment of peripheral spaces (Nel and Rogerson, 2009).

An analysis was undertaken by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) (2015) into the demographic and economic situation of 24 of the 27 district municipalities that make up the distressed areas. This established that on average each of these districts had been 0.28%–1.63% of the national population, but their share of national Gross Value Added (GVA) ranged from only 0.23%–1% in most cases (with two exceptions in mining areas where higher scores were recorded). Total employment levels ranged from 9.3% to 19% of the potential workforce, while dependency scores ranged from 65% to 82%. An example serves to illustrate the seriousness of the situation, Alfred Nzo District, which lies within the former Transkei Homeland, has 1.55% of the national population, but it only generates 0.48% of national GVA with an employment level of only 9.5% (CSIR, 2015).

Across all economic (gross domestic product, unemployment) and social indicators (water, sanitation, housing), the distressed areas emerge as spaces of despair, the most poverty-stricken, underdeveloped and marginal zones of the country (CSIR, 2013). Infrastructural deficiencies in these areas limit prospects for new productive work creation in agriculture, tourism or manufacturing, and large numbers of households necessarily are dependent for survival on government social grants and welfare. Typically, a picture of ‘low incomes, high levels of poverty, reliance on public sector funding, community services, and the outflow of revenue as residents and businesses source and sell their goods and services outside the District’ is described for Sekhukhune District Municipality (2014: 318) in Limpopo. Likewise, as in much of rural KwaZulu-Natal, the Zululand District Municipality is scarred by a combination of ‘high HIV/AIDS infection rates, high levels of poverty and high levels of unemployment’ (Zululand District Municipality, 2003: 1). The formal economy of Sisonke District Municipality (KwaZulu-Natal) (2012) is described as dominated by ‘low or unskilled occupations’, and for those residents in employment, the major sectors are those of the public sector – community services followed by agriculture. Finally, the economy of Chris Hani District Municipality (2013: 25) in Eastern Cape is described as ‘heavily reliant on community services’ with the largest contributor to the local economy being government and 52% of jobs in community services.

Growing concern with the persistence of spatial inequalities has ignited national government as well as academic scrutiny. It has been noted that ‘South Africa’s spatial inequalities are substantial, both between and within regions. It is generally believed that these disparities are inequitable and that they are structural in character’ (Turok, 2011b: 2). Government has admitted that certain of its interventions to date have underperformed which has not helped this situation (Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, 2012). Moreover, it is contended that ‘spatial inequalities have proved to be the most stubborn legacy of apartheid, both reflecting and reinforcing wider social inequities’ (Turok, 2010a: 267). The Presidential Policy Forum has called for strategies to address marginalisation and apartheid-inherited spatial inequalities, and the National Development Plan specifically identified the ex-Homelands as regions where ‘spatial inequality needs to be taken more seriously’ (National Planning Commission, 2011b: 33). Indeed, fears that inequalities may increase further have led to calls in policy circles for resource redirection, improved connectivity and capacity building (Turok, 2010b). Within this context of the ‘distressed areas’, it has been argued that decentralised institutions of the state ‘can play a positive role in fostering development because of their superior local knowledge and their greater responsiveness on the ground compared with national bodies’ (Turok, 2011a: 21). LED policy remains an important local level intervention which local municipalities can potentially utilise to help address development challenges. The nature of policy directions charted by local governments in distressed area municipalities is the subject of analysis in the next section.

The distressed areas – Directions and challenges of LED strategic plans

An analysis of the scope, geography and key features of the municipalities in the distressed areas forms the starting point for this part of the discussion.

Table 1 provides a breakdown for South Africa’s nine provinces of the numbers of district municipalities, and local municipalities that are incorporated as distressed areas (district municipalities are a higher level of administration and each oversee and coordinates activities of four or more local municipalities which lie within their area of jurisdiction). It is revealed that the number of municipalities in the distressed areas is 161 in total, which represents 58% of all South Africa’s 278 local governments. Distressed areas are isolated in eight of South Africa’s nine provinces, and the only exception is Western Cape.

Table 1.

Distressed areas: Number of district municipalities and local municipalities.

	District municipalities	Local municipalities	Total
Free state	1	4	5
KwaZulu-Natal	10	50	60
Eastern Cape	5	28	33
Gauteng	1	4	5
Limpopo	5	25	30
Mpumulanga	1	5	6
North West	3	15	18
Northern Cape	1	3	4
Western Cape	0	0	0
All distressed areas	27	134	161

Source: Authors.

The spatial extent of the designated distressed areas of South Africa incorporates nearly all of the former rural Homelands areas. Geographically, the distressed areas cover all of the province of Limpopo, most of KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape and much of North West (Figure 2). In addition, parts of Northern Cape, Mpumalanga provinces as well as the Free State province, and one district municipality in Gauteng are designated as distressed areas. The province of the Western Cape is distinctive by having no local or district municipalities classed as distressed. It should be noted that this province does not incorporate any of the former Homelands.

Figure 2.

The post-apartheid creation of the provinces.

The visions espoused in statements about LED in distressed areas often relate to the desired achievement of inclusive local development. In the urban-focussed West Rand District Municipality (WRDM) in Gauteng, it is declared that the ‘main purpose of the WRDM within the sphere of local economic development is to facilitate and create an enabling environment for economic development, job creation, economic growth and poverty alleviation’ (West Rand District Municipality, 2015). Typically, also the mainly rural OR Tambo District Municipality (2012: 101) vision is of creating ‘a Municipality responsive to social aspirations for an economically vibrant, healthy, sustainable community’. The focus of many LED strategies is directed to build competitiveness and to target sectors of comparative advantage. For example, at uThungulu District Municipality in KwaZulu-Natal, ‘the local economic development strategy of the district focuses on its comparative advantages in the agriculture, tourism and manufacturing sectors’ (uThungulu District Municipality, 2015: 3). Another recent example of building competitiveness through LED is that stated in Chris Hani District Municipality whose goal is to: ‘Maximise the economic value and job creation potential of the District through a focus on strengthening of the comparative advantages of priority sectors and creating a distinctive competitive advantage in the timber and livestock production and processing sectors’ (Chris Hani District Municipality, 2015). Another case is that of Capricorn District Municipality in Limpopo Province.

The principal goal of this Strategy is to improve the quality of life in the district through pro-poor economic growth that creates high quality jobs, generates wealth and investment, and helps ensure the district’s long term fiscal health. The strategic directions and actions will enhance the competitive position of individuals, households, businesses and the district as a whole in an ever changing global economic landscape. (Capricorn District Municipality, 2008: 4)

Finally, there are somewhat unrealistic expectations expressed in certain other LED visions. One example is that of the third ranked most economically inactive district in KwaZulu-Natal, Sisonke District Municipality (recently retitled Harry Gwala District Municipality), which aims to:

Develop and establish purpose built world class industrial and commercial facilities within the district, with the view to encourage the productive sector of the economy; and Market locally built and developed industrial and commercial facilities and special economic zones, locally and internationally, and position the district economic nodes as the preferred location for quality export oriented investment projects and mobilising and attracting such investment projects to the district. (Sisonke District Municipality, 2015: 1)

Arguably, the challenges facing these municipalities in pursuing successful LED strategies reflect many of the issues which have been highlighted at the national level (Rogerson, 2010; Rogerson and Rogerson, 2012). The issue of capacity shortages for LED planning and implementation is reflected in several areas. For example in Waterberg (Limpopo), the District Municipality IDP bemoans the situation of ‘insufficient economic development personnel at local municipalities’ (Waterberg District Municipality, 2014: 129). The Gamagara IDP stresses the imperative to ‘improve institutional capacity for LED’ (Gamagara Local Municipality, 2011: 48). Likewise, the LED strategy prepared for Capricorn District Municipality with support from the European Union, highlights clearly that ‘the lack of human resource capacity within local municipalities in the district, with the exception of Polokwane Municipality continues to be a disservice in how local government interacts and supports business in its objective to contribute to economic growth’ (Capricorn District Municipality, 2008: 35). Another theme repeated across many districts is the question of funding shortages for supporting LED activities. The implications of inadequate funding are starkly made clear in the IDP produced by Dr Ruth S. Mompati District Municipality (2011: 246) which states:

Given the functions, roles and responsibilities of the Economic Development Unit as above the staff complement is small as a result of the limited financial resources of the Municipality. The staff constraint has resulted in the Economic Development Unit having dismal impact on the economic development and growth of the District.

Issues of inadequate data to support appropriate LED planning are evidenced across statements made in several municipal IDPs and LED strategic plans. The dilemma of inadequate data for LED planning is highlighted among others by Sekhukhune District Municipality (2014: 291) which states simply: ‘it must be noted that it is very difficult to find accurate data for the local level in South Africa’.

From the perspective of academic research, LED has been identified as failing to impact on local development needs, particularly in the former Homeland areas (Bagopane, 2012; Rogerson and Rogerson, 2012). In Nkonkobe, the local municipality established that ‘LED has a marginal effect in local economic activity and employment creation. LED activities are still not yet fully coordinated’ (Mago and Hofisi, 2013: 56). In Ngaka Modiri Molema district municipality, it was reported that LED is “unsatisfactory and dysfunctional” (Bagopane, 2012: 1). A real concern exists that unless the effectiveness of LED can be improved in these areas that poorly designed LED interventions risk exacerbating inequalities (Ndlovu and Makoni, 2014). Having detailed the real development backlogs which exist in the distressed areas and the clear limitations which LED has experienced, attention now turns to an analysis of what is being planned or attempted in terms of LED in the country.

Analysis of LED policy and planning in distressed areas

In this section, a quantitative analysis is presented of the directions and focus areas of the 161 municipalities which are classed as being within the boundaries of distressed areas. The findings are derived from a content analysis of accessed LED documents and IDP statements as well as summaries as given in Gaffney’s (2014) and supplemented by information available from the South African LED Network. The analysis unfolds by first presenting an analysis for the 161 districts and subsequently to highlight observed similarities and differences in a comparison of LED planning in distressed districts with the patterns observed for all South Africa’s 278 municipalities.

Table 2 provides a profile of the key focus areas of LED policy and planning across the 161 municipalities that are contained within the official designation of distressed areas. Table 2 seeks to offer an analysis of the most significant strategic choices and to differentiate them for purposes of analysis between the 27 district municipalities and the 134 local municipalities. The most striking finding is of the overwhelming dominance in LED policy and planning in the distressed areas upon tourism, agriculture and Small, Medium and Micro-enterprise (SMME) promotion. In terms of tourism, the analysis discloses the remarkable position that 85.2% of district municipalities and 85.8% of local municipalities across the distressed areas are targeting tourism as a driver for local development. The current patterns of tourism in these areas are dominated by domestic rather than international travellers and mainly by visiting friends and relatives travel with leisure tourism only of secondary significance (Rogerson, 2014b, 2015a, 2015b, 2015c). The planned expansion of tourism is viewed as popular focus because of its acknowledged potential in South Africa for poverty alleviation and its reliance on external capital sources (Rogerson, 2006). For example, in the case of Waterberg, the pro-poor potential of tourism is made explicit:

There is a rich biosphere which is home to the Makapan’s Valley World Heritage Site, the natural reserve, with an abundance of birds, fauna, flora and hot springs. This is a key catalyst for the development of the tourism industry which would provide economic opportunities needed to alleviate poverty. (The South African LED Network, 2015: 2)

Table 2.

Major focus areas of LED policy and planning in distressed areas.

Focus	DM (total 27)	%	LM (total 134)	%	Total response out of 161	%
SMMEs	20	74.1	99	73.8	119	73.9
Tourism	23	85.2	115	85.8	138	85.7
IS/Coops	8	29.6	45	33.6	53	32.9
Agriculture	23	85.2	99	73.8	122	75.8
Industry	2	7.4	6	4.5	8	5.0
Job creation	8	29.6	48	35.8	56	34.7
LED strategy	5	18.5	16	11.9	21	13.0
Infrastructure	2	7.4	4	3.0	6	3.7
Investment attraction	7	25.9	17	13.0	24	14.9
Skills	4	14.8	10	7.6	14	8.7

Source: Survey. DM: district municipality; LM: local municipality; SMME: Small, Medium and Micro-enterprise; LED: Local Economic Development.

The pro-poor credentials of support for (mainly small-scale) agriculture (including forestry) and for SMME (predominantly support for new entrepreneurs from poorer communities) development are obvious factors that underpin the strength of these two focus areas of LED policy. In the case of agriculture, a total of 85.2% of district municipalities and 73.8% of local municipalities across the distressed areas are concentrating upon agricultural upgrading for accelerating prospects for local development. In a parallel with a heavy emphasis at national level devoted to SMME support programming, as exemplified by the establishment of a new dedicated Ministry for Small Business, across the distressed area as many as 74.1% of district municipalities and 73.8% of local municipalities are prioritising SMME development as part of their ongoing LED initiatives.

Beyond the three leading focus areas, Table 2 highlights the significance of other focus areas for LED policy in distressed areas. It is evident that approximately one-third of municipalities are committed to programmes for job creation in general and support for the informal sector or cooperatives. In particular, the commitment is for supporting cooperatives as only a handful of municipalities indicate programmes for informal sector support and upgrading such as through the provision of market stalls. The extended support for cooperatives is particularly a feature of the mainly rural municipalities and often allied to agricultural development. In association with LED, initiatives for boosting competitiveness a focus on investment attraction is evidenced in nearly 15% of municipalities. Given the laggard pace of national government of guiding LED strategy (despite nearly two decades of national government encouragement of LED), it is not surprising that 13% of municipalities in distressed areas flagged the preparation of an LED strategy as a commitment in their IDP statements. Training programmes for skills upgrading was a focus of commitment across nearly 10% of the 161 municipalities.

Of minor significance was support for infrastructure-led initiatives for promoting LED and for industrial development. In the wake of current national government’s initiatives both for widespread rollout of infrastructure projects and support of reindustrialisation, including through incentives and special economic zones, the sparse interest in these two focus areas is somewhat surprising (Nel and Rogerson, 2013, 2014; Rogerson, 2014a). Finally, across certain of the distressed areas other ‘niche’ focus areas were occasionally identified as pillars for LED policy. These encompassed an array of initiatives in aquaculture, mining, wind farms/renewable energy, forestry and support for partnerships, establishment of LED Forums as well as business strategy development. It is apparent from the above that ‘pro-poor’ thinking is a dominant thrust in policy choices, which clearly relate to the economic hardships which these areas face. While the policy choice might be appropriate, the sustainability and success attained by these interventions in the country over time has been limited (Nel and Rogerson, 2005; Nel et al., 2009).

The support for particular focus areas is not uniform across the distressed areas. Table 3 reveals geographical differences in focus areas across the eight provinces which incorporate the distressed districts. Certain interesting areas of concentration are disclosed when comparing each major focus area across the share of municipalities in each province, as compared with the overall pattern for distressed areas in total. These are shown in Table 3. It is evident, for example, in terms of tourism that beyond high levels of commitment across all areas the municipalities in Mpumalanga, Limpopo and Eastern Cape are ‘over-represented in tourism’ and thus strongly focussed on tourism-led LED. Equally, in terms of agriculture, this is a noteworthy focus in the distressed municipalities of Eastern Cape where 93.9% of municipalities show a preference for agriculture as local driver. For SMME development, there are several provinces that appear strongly committed to this focus area, including the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, North West, Mpumalanga and Gauteng. For informal sector/cooperative development support, Gauteng, Limpopo and Eastern Cape are the most prominent, and for job creation in general, Gauteng, Eastern Cape and North West are ‘over-represented’ in this focus area, as compared to the national pattern for distressed areas as a whole. Relative under-representation of certain focus areas in particular provinces can also be discerned. Most notable, perhaps, are relative under-representation of tourism in Free State and Northern Cape, of SMMEs in Free State, Northern Cape and Limpopo, and of agriculture in Gauteng, Free State, North West and Limpopo.

Table 3.

Geographical variations in focus areas of LED planning in distressed areas.

	No. of Municipalities	Tourism	IS/Coops	Agriculture	SMMEs	Job creation
Free State	5	60.0	20.0	60.0	60.0	20.0
KwaZulu-Natal	60	80.0	25.0	70.0	76.7	30.0
Eastern Cape	33	93.9	36.4	93.9	84.8	54.5
Gauteng	5	80.0	60.0	50.0	80.0	80.0
Limpopo	30	90.0	56.7	63.3	66.7	10.0
Mpumalanga	6	100	16.7	66.7	83.3	33.3
North West	18	77.8	22.2	61.1	77.8	50.0
Northern Cape	4	75.0	0	75.0	50.0	25.0
All	161	85.7	32.9	75.8	73.9	34.7

Note: The percentages for Gauteng, Free State and Northern Cape should be understood to refer to only 1 District Municipality and the relevant local municipalities. DM: district municipality; LM: local municipality; SMME: Small, Medium and Micro-enterprise.

In terms of geographical variation in commitment to particular focus areas for LED, Table 4 offers a summary of the three leading focus areas per province. The ranking is based on the total number of municipalities in distressed areas in each province committed to a particular focus area. This analysis re-emphasises again the overwhelming significance attached to tourism for LED policy across the distressed areas. In all eight impacted provinces, tourism is the leading sector of importance. In KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo or Mpumalanga, it is the primary focus area of choice across municipalities. In the other provinces, equal importance is attached to other focus areas such as, for example, agriculture in the two cases of Northern Cape and Eastern Cape and of SMMEs in North West. Across the eight provinces, the most common ranking is that of tourism as the most significant focus area followed by SMMEs and then agriculture. The exceptional case is the province of Gauteng with its urban focus, and thus agriculture is not ranked as high in importance as that of a focus on job creation.

Table 4.

Ranked leading focus areas of LED planning in distressed areas by province.

	Rank 1	Rank 2	Rank 3
Free State	SMMEs, Agriculture, Tourism
KwaZulu-Natal	Tourism	SMMEs	Agriculture
Eastern Cape	Agriculture, Tourism		SMMEs
Gauteng	Tourism, SMMEs, Job creation
Limpopo	Tourism	SMMEs	Agriculture
Mpumalanga	Tourism	SMMEs	Agriculture
North West	Tourism, SMMEs		Agriculture
Northern Cape	Tourism, Agriculture		SMMEs

SMME: Small, Medium and Micro-enterprise.

Finally, it is useful to highlight distinctive traits in respect of LED policy in the distressed areas as a whole as compared to the national profile. This particular analysis is anchored upon a comparison between the focus areas of LED policy across the 161 distressed area municipalities with a wider parallel national audit of LED policy statements in all South Africa’s 278 municipalities (Nel and Rogerson, 2016). Tables 5 and 6 offer a comparison between the LED focus areas in distressed areas as compared to the national picture (Nel and Rogerson, 2016). From Table 5, it is disclosed that in the distressed areas, there is a relative emphasis upon agriculture, SMMEs, informal sector/cooperatives, job creation and building an LED strategy as compared to the national profile. Correspondingly, in relative terms compared to the national profile, the distressed areas tend to under-emphasise tourism, industry, investment attraction, skills training and using infrastructure as leverage for development. In Table 6, the ranking of the most important sectors for LED policy reaffirms, however, the clear significance of tourism in both the distressed areas and South Africa as a whole. In light of the rural dominance of the distressed areas as a whole, agriculture is the second most important focus area followed by SMMEs which is a departure from the national profile.

Table 5.

Comparison of focus areas: Distressed areas vs. South Africa as a whole.

Focus	Distressed areas	South Africa	Relative focus
SMMEs	73.9	71.2	+
Tourism	85.7	87.1	−
IS/Coops	32.9	27.7	+
Agriculture	75.8	68.3	+
Industry	5.0	9.0	−
Job creation	34.7	32.7	+
LED strategy	13.0	10.4	+
Infrastructure	3.7	8.6	−
Investment attraction	14.9	15.5	−
Skills	8.7	10.4	−

SMME: Small, Medium and Micro-enterprise; LED: Local Economic Development.

Table 6.

Ranked leading focus areas of LED planning in distressed areas vs. South Africa as a whole.

	Rank 1	Rank 2	Rank 3
All Distressed DMs/LMs	Tourism	Agriculture	SMMEs
South Africa	Tourism	SMMEs	Agriculture

DM: district municipality; LM: local municipality; SMME: Small, Medium and Micro-enterprise.

The degree to which each of the LED activities proposed are actually supported and implemented is difficult to gauge. This is partly because plans do not always match with the expenditure which is actually proposed and partly because of the incomplete data captured in the national data-sets which were consulted as part of this research. Interestingly, separate funding for tourism activities is seldom identified, indicating that this may be undertaken using existing operational budgets. In terms of actual investment in LED activities, the average investment in capital projects and LED support in the distressed municipalities is R 9.4 mn (£0.4 mn) compared to R 15.9 mn (£0.75 mn) in the non-distressed municipalities (calculated from data available in Gaffney’s, 2014). Given the generally higher level of the development backlogs and the poor performance of LED to date, in South Africa in general but particularly in the distressed areas (Nel et al., 2009; Oranje, 2010), it is apparent that significantly greater investment is LED is needed, including national support – both financially and in terms of capacity support if LED is to make a realistic difference in these areas. In addition, there clearly is scope to engage more significantly with strategies which have greater potential to generate economic growth and not only focus on poverty alleviation. Ideally, the prospect of higher levels of state investment in the distressed areas through infrastructure and industrial development will be undertaken in synergy with LED, increasing prospects for positive change.

The desire to undertake LED as shown by the distressed areas in their IDP statements is to be commended, though the scale of this is difficult to access, as is the level of actual implementation which several writers above have argued is not occurring. There will also remain questions about the sustainability of the jobs created, as they will generally be dependent on support funding either from the expanded public works program or support for job creation co-operatives, however, given the high level of dependency on public sector, community service jobs and social grants in an economically deprived zone, this is not to be unexpected. These LED programmes are also often designed to address their internal populations’ needs including food production and seldom engage with production for a wider market which restricts their scope and potential impact.

Conclusion

South Africa’s distinctive history of uneven geographical development has resulted in spaces of despair in the form of its distressed areas. In acknowledgement of the condition of these areas, national government has enacted a battery of measures to seek to address spatial inequalities in the country (Rogerson and Nel, 2016). For nearly two decades, however, local place-based interventions have been put forward in these areas through LED plans and practices. Recent assessments of the implementation and impact of these LED policies and plans reveals an unpromising record. In these peripheral spaces, LED initiatives have been undertaken but with limited successes to date (Bagopane, 2012; Mago and Hofisi, 2013). Descriptions of the dysfunctional nature of LED and of its ‘marginal effects’ in the distressed areas are echoes of statements made by Oranje (2010: 66) about national spatial development initiatives which exhibit ‘more life on paper than in practice’.

The current cohort of LED policies and plans to support tourism development and pro-poor interventions for SMMEs and agriculture offer little for expectations of a radical transformation of the economic and social conditions in these areas. Indeed, given the weak and underperforming national state of LED in South Africa, its constraints and limited successes and constrained budget allocations, minimal prospects exist for these LED plans across the distressed areas to impact substantially the structural nature of spatial inequalities in South Africa. Given this conclusion, one welcomes the appearance during 2015 of what appears to be a new agenda for sustainable local development in the peripheral spaces of South Africa (Ndabeni et al., 2016). The outlines of this new cutting edge agenda revolve around potential interventions being undertaken by South Africa’s Department of Science and Technology (DST, 2015a, 2015b) to understand and adopt an innovation approach as an analytical framework and development paradigm for rethinking the directions of LED interventions in marginal underdeveloped spaces. For LED practitioners across the global South, the roll out and impact of this new analytical framework merits considerable attention.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Wendy Job for the preparation of the two maps.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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