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Industrial Decentralisation Policy and the Prospects for the Development of South Africa's Homelands

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Mark Addleson  and
Richard Tomlinson
Mark Addleson
Affiliation:
Lecturer in Economics, Graduate School of Business Administration
Richard Tomlinson
Affiliation:
Senior Lecturer in the Department of Town and Regional Planning, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
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Extract

In many respects the subject of industrial decentralisation is both a mirror and focal point of issues that predominate in South African Society at large. From its origins in the early 1960s, the state's strategy in this field has been an implement apartheird. Despite a conthinunously changing institutional and spatial framework,2 the policy remains grounded in the attempt to maintain the geographic separation of blacks and whites, by reinforcing control over the influx of the former into the metropolitan areas, and by bolstering the economic political structures of the Homelands.

Type
Africana
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , March 1986 , pp. 155 - 163
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

Page 155 note 1 This is a revised version of paper that was presented to the Annual Meeting of the Allied Social Science Associations, Dallas, December 1984, as a result of a travel grant from the Human Sciences Research Council. The support of the Richard Ward Endowment Fund, University of the Witwatersrand, is also greatfully acknowledged.

Page 155 note 2 See Pretorius, Frederick, Addleson, Mark, and Tomlinson, Richard, ‘History of Industrial Decentralisation in South Africa’, in Development Southern Africa (Johannesburg), 3, 1, 1986, pp. 37–49, and 3, 2, 1986, forthcoming. An interpretation of the ideological shifts underlying changes in the state's industrial dispersal policies is offered by Daryl Glaser, ‘A Periodisation of South Africa's Industrial Dispersal Policies’, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 1986.Google Scholar

Page 155 note 3 Summary of Report of the Study Group on Industrial Development Strategy (Pretoria, 1982) - Dr S. J. Kleu was the chairman.Google Scholar

Page 155 note 4 Department of Foreign Affairs and Information, ‘The Promotion of Industrial Development: an element of a co-ordinated regional development strategy for Southern Africa’, in Information Newsletter, issued as a supplement to S.A. Digest (Pretoria), 1982.Google ScholarPubMed

Page 156 note 1 From its inception, decentralisation policy focused on the Homelands and, in the context of proposed political reforms, the State President was recently reported as saying that the Homelands were not negotiable. See The Star (Johannesburg), 15 02 1986.Google ScholarPubMed

Page 156 note 2 Department of Planning and Environment, A National Physical Development Plant (Pretoria, 1975).Google ScholarPubMed

Page 156 note 3 The 1982 policy designated nearly 50 growth points at which industries would be eligible for decentralisation subsidies. Manufacturers are also receiving incentives at approximately 80 additional ad hoc locations. See Board for the Decentralisation of Industry, Report on the Activities of the Board for the Period 1 April 1984 to 31 March 1985 (Pretoria, 1985).Google Scholar

Page 156 note 4 Truu, M. L., ‘Regional Economic Development in South Africa’, in Journal for Studies in Economics and Econometrics (Stellenbosch), special edition, 1983.Google Scholar

Page 156 note 5 The attempt to put an economic gloss on a political ideology is exemplified by the current practice of referring to state transfers to Homelands as ‘development aid’.

Page 157 note 1 Nattrass, Jill, The South African Economy: its growth and change (Cape Town, 1982), p. 195.Google Scholar

Page 157 note 2 See South African Institute of Race Relations, Survey of Race Relations in South Africa, 1983 (Johannesburg, 1984), pp. 298–315.Google Scholar

Page 157 note 3 Ligthelm, A. A. and Coetzee, S. F., ‘An Appropriate Development Strategy for Southern Africa’, in Development Southern Africa, 1, 1, 1984, p. 9.Google Scholar

Page 157 note 4 Most of our figures for sectoral economic activity in the Homelands are obtained from the Bureau for Economic Research: Co-operation and Development, Statistical Survey of Black Development (1982), Parts I and II (Pretoria, 1983). Though taken from the final published BENSO Survey, the figures refer to 1980. The reliability of the data is not beyond question but, given the general lack of socio-economic statistics for the Homelands, they are used because they came from a uniform source.Google Scholar

Page 158 note 1 Ligthelm, and Coetzee, , loc. cit. p. 10. See also Nattrass, op. cit. ch. 9, and BENSO, op. cit.Google Scholar

Page 158 note 2 Wellings, Paul A., ‘South Africa: recession, capital drainage and the Bantustans’, Annual Conference of the Institute of British Geographers, Durham, 01 1984.Google Scholar

Page 158 note 3 See Tomlinson, Richard and Addleson, Mark, ‘The Practice and Policy of South Africa's Regional Programme, with Special Reference to Industrial Decentralisation’, Annual Meeting of the Allied Social Science Associations, Dallas, December 1984.Google Scholar

Page 159 note 1 Since commuters, and especially migrants, spend a portion of their incomes outside the Homelands, the differents between G.N.P. and G.D.P. figures undoubtedly exaggerates the importance of their earnings for the Homelands. BENSO's estimates for the earnings of migrants represent the total income of those ‘temporarily’ resident outside the Homelands. Only about 20 per cent of the income, however, is through to be remitted to the Homelands.

Page 159 note 2 See Tomlinson, Richard, ‘Industrial Decentralisation and the Relif of Poverty in the South African Homelands’, in South African Journal of Economics (Johannesburg), 51, 12 1983, pp. 544–60.Google Scholar Also Davies, W. J., Lochner, T. G. and Wait, C. V. R., The Greater East London/King William's Town Development Region: towards a strategy for survival, Institute for Planning Research, University of Port Elizabeth, 1980, Research Report No. 20.Google Scholar

Page 160 note 1 Bell, R. T., The Growth and Structure of Manufacturing in Natal, Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Durban-Westville, 1983, Occasional Paper No. 7, p. 99.Google Scholar

Page 160 note 2 Marais, I. J. du(compiler), ‘Some Statistics on Manufacturing Industries in the TBVC and Self-Governing States’, Development Bank of Southern Africa, Johannesburg, January 1986.Google Scholar

Page 160 note 3 McCarthy, C. L., ‘Non-Farm Aspects of Integrated Development of Black Rural Areas’, in Spies, P. H. (ed.), Urban-Rural Interaction in South Africa (Stellenbosch, 1983).Google Scholar

Page 160 note 4 Ratcliffe, Anne, ‘Industry: 1980 and beyond’, in Matthews, Jacqueline (ed.), South Africa in the World Economy (Johannesburg, 1983).Google Scholar

Page 161 note 1 The discussion below draws largely on two studies: Dewar, David, Todes, Alison, and Watson, Vanessa, ‘Industrial Decentralisation Policy as a Mechanism for Regional Development in South Africa: its premises and record’, Urban Problems Research Unit, University of Cape Town, Working Paper No. 30, 1984;Google Scholar and Addleson, Mark, Pretorius, Frederick, and Tomlison, Richard, ‘The Impact of Industrial Decentralisation Policy: the businessman's view’, in South African Geographical Journal (Durban), 67, 2, 1985, pp. 179–200.Google Scholar

Page 162 note 1 The monthly incomes per capita of blacks and whites for the whole of South Africa in 1979 were R156 and R655, respectively, according to James Selfe of the Progressive Federal Party Research Department.Google Scholar On unemployment – the estimates of which vary considerably – see Department of Manpower, Report of the National Manpower Commission for the Period 1 January 1984– 31 December 1984 (Pretoria, 1985).Google Scholar

Page 162 note 2 Dewar et al. op. cit. p. 76, offer an estimate that the cost per job in the Homelands is four times that in the metropolitan areas. Because of the difficulty, inter alia, of identifying all state expenditures associated with decentralisation policy, it is not surprising that estimates of the direct costs of creating employment in the Homelands vary significantly.

Page 163 note 1 Summary of Report of the Study Group on Industrial Development Strategy, p. 17.Google Scholar

Page 163 note 2 See Rogerson, Christian M., ‘Apartheid, Decentralisation and Spatial Industrial Change’, in Smith, David M. (ed.), Living under Apartheid: aspects of urbanisation and social change in South Africa (London, 1982), pp. 47–63.Google Scholar