Industrial Decentralization Policy in South Africa: Rhetoric and Practice

Abstract

Industrial decentralization has formed a central element of state regional policy under South Africa's apartheid government. Increasingly, the government has attempted to justify this policy by linking it to international theories and precedents regarding regional development and the use of growth poles. This paper examines the potential efficacy of decentralization policy as a tool for promoting regional development in South Africa. It concludes that, in general terms, the policy has failed to meet the expectations of its proponents. Its continued emphasis in this country suggests that the motives underpinning the policy lie outside the field of regional development.

Contextualising South African local economic development within current development debates: The international setting

“…However, with the end of apartheid, these firms began to move en masse, either to large urban areas or abroad, and these decentralisation nodes have been dying as anyone able to has followed suit, in search of employment elsewhere. The firms exploiting the exceedingly generous incentives were both South African and foreign (especially from countries like Taiwan, Israel, and Hong Kong)--'playing the field' internationally as well as nationally (Dewar, Todes and Watson, 1986a;Hirsch, 1986;Tomlinson and Hyslop, 1986;Wellings and Black, 1986;Tomlinson and Addleson, 1987;Cobbett and Nakedi, 1988;Geyer, 1989;Whiteside, 1989;Pickles and Woods, 1989;Pickles and Weiner, 1991). Hart (2002) has also demonstrated that even towns outside the former bantustans (although with their dormitory townships within those boundaries) and intimately linked into the global economy through mineral exports and inward industrial investment, like Newcastle-Madadeni-Osizweni and Ladysmith-Ezakheni, have found their economic base being torn apart by rapidly changing circumstances, many of which are beyond local control.…”

The Bantustans of Apartheid South Africa: Transitioning From Industry to Tourism

“…Some political analysts, such as Venter (1979), applauded the ongoing progress of factory openings and of industrial development in Bantustans such as Transkei. Nevertheless, it was evident by the late 1970s that the initiatives towards regional development and especially for industrial development were not attaining the desired objectives of apartheid planners including bolstering political structures in the Bantustans (Dewar et al, 1986;Addleson and Tomlinson, 1986). In particular, the numbers of jobs created in manufacturing within decentralized spaces was massively short of the targets which the Tomlinson Commission had set in its master planning for 'grand apartheid'.…”

“…Indeed, Cobbett et al (1985Cobbett et al ( , 1987 argued that the revised 1982 regional programme was intended by state planners to provide the base for the future political and economic map of South Africa. Within this new framework for development planning, national government sought vigorously to further its long-established goals of promoting industrial decentralization and deflect manufacturers away from the existing metropolitan areas towards a set of designated 'growth poles' in peripheral regions of the country including (but not exclusively) the Bantustans (Hirsch, 1984;Dewar et al, 1986;Tomlinson and Addleson, 1987;Wellings and Black, 1987;Addleson, 1990;Platzky, 1995). The number of localities which were designated for support increased greatly, a move that would be one factor in the long-term 'failure' of the programme.…”

Reviewing the Guayana project: Lifetime migration to and from Bolivar state, Venezuela, 1950–2001

“…Population growth of capital cities often outstripped that of all, frequently resulting in the accumulation of a disproportionate share of national economic resources and political power (El‐Shahks, 1972). In countering the effects of this primacy, many developing countries attempted to divert economic resources and population to secondary cities, in some instances creating planned industrial cities referred to as ‘growth poles’ such as in Venezuela (Friedmann, 1969), Turkey (Rodwin, 1970), South Africa (Dewar et al ., 1986), Brazil (Townroe & Keen, 1983), Egypt (Stewart, 1996), Taiwan (Williams, 2003), Thailand (Glassman & Sneddon, 2003) and India (Sridhar, 2006). The consensus is that such undertakings neither radically altered migration patterns within the respective countries nor spatially diffused economic development to peripheral or outlying areas.…”