The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Territorial Review of the Gauteng City-Region has provided an important opportunity to take stock of the progress Gauteng has made in fighting poverty, underdevelopment and inequality we inherited in 1994.
At the end of the first decade of democracy in 2004, the Gauteng Provincial Government identified the need for new strategies to fast-track development and build more equitable Gauteng we can all proudly call home. Together with municipalities, we adopted a new perspective and roadmap to build Gauteng as a globally-competitive and more socially-inclusive city-region.
This included initiatives to marshal the province’s intellectual capital, drawing more systematically from international experience and evidence and building the requisite knowledge base to better address the city-region’s development challenges and opportunities.
This is the context within which we commissioned the Territorial Review in 2009. We anticipated that it would provide a credible source of data and analysis on questions of economic development, social equity, urban and rural development, governance, spatial planning, sustainability and quality of life.
We understood that this work would enable:
- A thorough assessment of economic, social and governance performance in the province;
- The benchmarking of progress made in developing the Gauteng City-Region over time as well as against other city-regions globally; and
- An evaluation of some our key public policy interventions.
While this review was conducted at our request, it is worth noting that this is not a report of government. It is an independent peer review, conducted and published by the OECD.
The Review underlines the importance of Gauteng as South Africa – and Africa’s – most important city-region, responsible for 34% of national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and a key business gateway to southern Africa and the continent at large.
This province is an integrated cluster of cities, towns and urban nodes that are together home to 11.2 million people, 22% of the country’s population. If we consider the economic connections that traverse the province’s administrative boundaries, the extended city-region makes up 43% of national output.
One of the findings of the review is that even though Gauteng is one of the provinces with the lowest unemployment rate in the country, its unemployment rate is highest across the OECD metro-regions.
The review also reaffirmed what we have been saying all along about the nature and causes of this unemployment. If many can recall, we have always taken the position that unemployment in Gauteng is severely affected by a spatial mismatch between locations of employment and places of residence. The majority of our people are staying in townships far away from employment opportunities.
It is in that light that we have been unapologetic about our unwavering support for the creation of integrated, sustainable human settlements throughout our province. After all, if we do not make an effort in changing the landscape of our province, we will be failing the millions who have tasked us with changing their lives for the better.
It also points to high rates of in-migration into Gauteng. At 2.8 percent annually between 1997 and 2007; this is nearly three times the OECD metro-regions’ average. This has a significant impact on a range of other indicators such as unemployment and per capita growth as well as access to and the quality of a range of public services which need to be taken into cognisance.
The Gauteng City-Region is marked by high levels of subsidised housing in peripheral job-poor zones and a dysfunctional secondary housing market. No subsidies are given to low-income residents to rent in moderate-income neighbourhoods, as is common throughout OECD countries. Compared to other OECD regions, indicators suggest that housing is unaffordable in Gauteng. In this regard, we continue with our concerted efforts to find more affordable housing solutions in the province, including providing rental stocks.
We recognise that an OECD Territorial Review is ultimately about promoting a better understanding of metropolitan regions, and the role that they play in national and global space economies, as well as a more sophisticated view on how well-designed and well-executed territorial policy can make a metropolitan area or city-region more competitive, more equitable and more sustainable.
We welcome the findings and recommendations of this review in the same positive spirit we had when we commissioned the study. We believe that the Territorial Review lives up to its promise of providing Gauteng with an extremely useful base of comparative data and analysis that will inform future government policies and strategies.
In overall terms we believe that the OECD Territorial Review of the Gauteng City-region will indeed help us to sharpen our own policy and practice. We hope that in conducting this Review, the OECD has been able to augment its own base of knowledge around regions and territorial policies to the benefit of all its members.
Allow me to thank the OECD for the substantial work embodied in this Territorial Review. In particular we acknowledge the co-ordinating, analytical and drafting work of the Secretariat; the insights from the panel of peer reviewers who represented the expertise of OECD nations on the second Mission to Gauteng in July 2010; as well as the contributions of the OECD’s international experts.
We note that the Review is consistent with the findings of National Planning Commission’s Diagnostic Report that was released earlier this year; and that its recommendations are consonant with the NPC’s long term vision and plan which was released on 11 November 2011.
We see this Review as an important diagnostic input into the province’s long-term strategic planning - the Gauteng Vision 2055 - which will chart a long-term development path for our province.
Last Friday, 25 November 2011, I announced in the Gauteng Legislature that the Gauteng Planning Commission (GPC), which is located in the Office of the Premier, will take responsibility for this work. The GPC will work in close co-operation with the Gauteng Advisory Council, comprising of key persons drawn from academia, non-governmental organisations and civil society.
We will be calling upon key stakeholders from business, labour, media, youth and church-based organisations and the public to engage with the Gauteng Advisory Council on building a vision for an inclusive, sustainable and prosperous Gauteng.
For more information contact:
Xoli Mngambi
Cell: 082 373 1146
