Cooperative Governance Minister, Dr Zweli Mkhize, has told attendees at a Special Economic Zones (SEZ) conference on Thursday, that in order for the zones to be successful, municipalities had to be fully involved in the process.

SEZs were located in local, district or metropolitan municipalities, and for the success of the SEZ, municipalities had to be part of the planning, designing and implementation, said Mkhize. 

“For the benefit of SEZs, the municipalities should be in [a] position to achieve the following: They must address issues causing power outages by upgrading and maintaining substations to improve the reliability of electricity supply.

“They must put in place security measures to address cable theft, extend basic services to all households and prevent illegal connections. They must maintain and extend road infrastructure to sort out potholes,” said Mkhize.

He was speaking at the Inkosi Albert Luthuli International Convention Centre (ICC) in Durban on Thursday during the country’s first national SEZ investment conference.

In his state-of-the-nation address, in February President Cyril Ramaphosa said industrial parks and SEZs would be singled out for revitalisation as part of strategic interventions to achieve inclusive economic growth.

Mkhize said that municipalities needed to identify and service vacant land for industrial development adjacent to where people lived and design and implement integrated transport plans to facilitate the flow of goods and workers between the SEZ and residential locations.

“They must develop and implement human settlement plans that support the SEZ, maintain and extend water and wastewater infrastructure to support the SEZs as well as the surrounding communities.”

Special land disposal committees should also be established by municipalities to fast-track the disposal of land required for the SEZs, he said.

“They should streamline the regulatory environment. This could be achieved by establishing targeted investment support programmes with streamlined and accelerated regulatory approvals. For example, as a result of this approach building plan approvals in Atlantis take just five days.”

Municipalities should also work with a range of national, provincial and local institutions to put in place incubation programmes for local SMMEs. They should also be ready to support informal traders, many of whom were the source of income for many families.

They were also to conduct targeted skills audits and training to support supply chain linkages.

“The success of the SEZ programme is very important for us as COGTA because of our national urban policy, the Integrated Urban Development Framework (IUDF), which envisions a new spatial form for South African cities and towns.

“Our view is that the 10 designated SEZs are intended to be major catalysts towards the achievement of the spatial transformation outcomes in our towns and cities. The SEZs and industrial parks have the potential to catapult towns like Musina to become a big city, and outlying areas like Atlantis in the Cape Metro to become a city within a city,” he said.