DEVELOPMENT-SOUTH AFRICA: A Plan to Close the Poverty Gap

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Farah Khan

JOHANNESBURG, Apr 21 2003 (IPS) - When visitors to the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) arrived in Johannesburg last year, many were struck by the two visages of the city: poverty nestling next to extreme luxury.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Sandton-Alexandra nexus – Sandton was the main venue of the WSSD last year; Alexandra is a so-called "township" – an urban slum just 10 minutes away.

Now an urban development plan to merge the two faces of the city is beginning to take shape. Alexandra, with a population of about 350,000, bustles on a Saturday morning – commuters weave between stalls selling a variety of products, from dried animal skins, to sewing courses and more mundane retail goods. It is also the morning of a Chief’s versus Pirates soccer derby (they are the country’s top teams), so hawkers of the yellow, black and white team insignia do a roaring trade.

This is the area called Pan-Africa and in the distance, the spires and gloss of the financial district of Sandton glint in the mid-morning sun. These are two worlds; two economies. The plan, says Karien Engelbrecht, project manager of the Alex urban renewal project, is to bring the two in closer proximity so there are linkages to benefit development and the small and medium-sized businesses that will be the engine of local growth.

The renewal project is one of seven other urban plans being plotted around the country to stimulate metropolitan centres where urbanisation and poverty have combined to create areas of deep need and of high unemployment.

Pan-Africa is currently a mess of building debris as a large area is being cleared to create a proper trading precinct. Where now a chaotic warren of taxis keeps pedestrians on their nerves, in time, they will go into a proper holding bay and a decent rank. A market is being planned "to recognise the synergies between taxis and hawkers," says Engelbrecht.

A line of stalls show what will come. In bright colours, under protective shades, the stalls on one street of Pan-Africa are a sampler of the bigger plan – the creation of a "proper African trading space".

Next year, plans are afoot to create direct access from Grayston Drive (the main road into Sandton) and Alexandra to end its isolation and to open up economic linkages between the wealth of Sandton and the underdevelopment of Alexandra.

The opportunities for small, micro and medium-sized businesses (SMME) are vast. Business audits have shown that Alex – as it is called – is a hive of trading activity with thousands of small businesses operating from the streets: hair salons and car components are the biggest businesses, though upholstery, car wash and food are also huge. Immediate opportunities from the urban renewal plan have been in construction and services, but there will be knock-on effects for the taxi industry, hawkers, service workers and manufacturing once the plan’s working at scale.

The Alex urban renewal project is the most far advanced of the government’s reconstruction and local economic development mega-plan. Last year, IPS reported on progress with the development plan and returned this year to see if it is still on track.

From the cricket oval, one has a birds-eye view over Alex and it is clear that things are happening. Building sites are dotted across the area – Engelbrecht points out formal housing projects that are being constructed to cater for people currently living in shacks and those squatting in the back-yards of formal houses.

Now that the project is three years old, attention is shifting from the immediate needs like housing, electricity and water to the other essentials of development, like the Pan-African trading area (economic development will ensure the longevity of the plan) and to recreation.

Several parks have been planned and laid out. For the first time in the 100 years of Alex’s history, it now has parks. Called "Nigeria" and "Bissau", the parks feature chess boards and benches. At Bissau, a children’s only park, little ones peer curiously at the photographer, momentarily distracted from the brightly painted play aeroplane they are clambering over.

A walkway along the Jukskei river area is being completed – part of the effort to calm the area and to provide space for play and for relaxation, says Engelbrecht.

It will take at least ten years more before the plan is fully implemented, and the distortions of unequal wealth are not so stark. But ten years after apartheid has ended, there is progress in Alex at least. South Africa’s freedom day is on Apr 27.