eThekwini metropolitan municipality (Durban) and Msunduzi local municipality (Pietermaritzburg) are working together to address their development challenges. City Managers, Michael Sutcliffe of eThekwini and Thabane Zulu of Msunduzi, talked with the South African Cities Network about working together in the country's most populated province.

SACN: Now that there is a growing consensus that Pretoria, Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni should be viewed as a single economic city region, what are the implications for Msunduzi and eThekwini?

Sutcliffe: We mustn't jump into looking at comparisons, when it comes to Gauteng we are dealing with 40% of the South African economy. eThekweni at the moment is probably about 10% or 11% of the South African economy, Msunduzi would be a lot smaller than that, it would be few percent. So in total it is not a city region in those global terms, but clearly there are a lot of synergies between the two. So from our side it wouldn't be to talk about a city region - I think that everyone wants to jump and say that this is the new model. Let 's deal with that - clearly from a broad industrial point at view you have to think of the areas (Durban and Pietermaritzburg) as a single conurbation, because clearly the kind of industries we have in our city, as an example Durban being the biggest manufacturing hub, obviously has an impact on the main transport routes to Johannesburg so there's really a corridor between the two in terms of that. So from an industrial perspective there's a huge synergy between the two and clearly we've been doing some work in the outer west (of Durban). In fact we had just begun discussions with the previous city manager on how you make sure that the interface between the western part of the city and the eastern apart of Msunduzi, how we begin to ensure that industrial, and business and commercial corridor continues through.

So I think that the key thing for me is not to talk about city regions but really to talk about what are the synergies in terms of productive activities. The second issue will obviously be the synergies we have in a variety of other areas, there it would be providing basic services to people. Of the two of us, eThekwini, is about an 80% customer of Umgeni Water, I think Msunduzi is at least 10%. So the two of us represent over 90% - we then need to look at water as a resource, how we bring that synergy together in Umgeni Water and most importantly how we use the strengths of our regions to actually assist in developing the rest of the province - so I think there are a variety of other things that we should be focused on rather than notions of a city region.

Zulu: I think that I would agree with Mike that we have to start looking first at that particular area before we can start looking at the concept of a global city region and we have started that exercise anyway, to look at strategies between the two cities and see where we can draw synergies and we are looking at sectors between the two cities that we can begin identify, in terms of sharing information and sharing skills that we have in those specific sectors. We need to have mutual cooperation between the two cities. For me that could lead us to the next stage of the city region - of a bigger concept in terms of what we can do. And I am sure once we have achieved that, which is very fundamental, then we can begin to move forward at a regional level and say what can we do collectively.

SACN: What are the sectors that you have identified?

Zulu: Well in our own local economy, in Pietermaritzburg the sectors that we think are quite exciting are tourism, as well as the leather industry in our region even though it is not up to scratch at this point in time, because I think we had not been paying attention in the past, when the municipalities were basically doing administration work. The other one is the retail industry which is growing, and property development, which is linked to the city receiving capital of the province status.

SACN: What are the main challenges that you face in terms of urbanisation and the provision of housing?

Sutcliffe: Well, certainly the main thing for us around urbanisation is sustainability and that really is probably, particularly in the Gauteng context, I would've thought it far more important than `city region'. Because if we look at it in world terms, the peat oil debate, suggests that anything from 40 to 60 years time we would have run out of oil. Now that has huge implications for cities, because unless you have public transport and other transport modes in place - and I'm sure that there might be other fuels that will come in - but they are going to be much more expensive, so the first issue that we have got to really look at is the issue of sustainability and the present urban forms.

Now the second issue for us, and it has a particular apartheid spin on it, would obviously be densification. Where our cities simply don't follow a pattern that allows efficiencies in service provision. So the poor are usually furthest from the city in the most spatially expensive areas, furthest from economic opportunities, so we have got to invert that and begin to actually focus on that, the first dimension being sustainability and the second dimension being a focus on densification.

The third is then making sure that we get a better match between economic and residential places so we are arguing quite strongly in our IDP for quality living environments being quite a key focus of what we're doing, so it's not just housing in a narrow sense, and where people live, but what's the package of urban services they are going to have, so that is why huge stock is made of our division of the municipality into broadly three areas. The first being the urban core, the second being an urban edge of primarily residential areas and the third being those rural areas that we have. So that for us is the key challenge of urbanisation and how we manage those three. That's why the corridor between us and Msunduzi also becomes important because what we're saying is that the huge growth in residential areas in the outer west of Durban, we're now beginning to curb and saying that you can't continue, its simply not sustainable and rather keep low densities there.

We've got to manage that collectively because on the other side of that boundary is Msunduzi. We know that corridors, particularly from an environmental point of view, is very critical for the city of Durban. It's an ideal place for people who want to be in the legislature or in the capital of the province, it's 20 minutes from most places so we've got to be quite careful.

Zulu: Yes, the other challenge that we have is that we have almost two types of worlds - we have a first world and a second world and in most instances you will find that rural areas are the most inequitable. So the kinds of strategies that you put in place to improve the standard of living becomes a challenge, particularly from a service equitability point of view.

How you make sure that you put people at the same level of the first world citizen without compromising their levels of income. At the same time trying to make sure that you improve their service delivery. That becomes a huge challenge. We need to make sure we don't lose the bigger picture of developing a single city. This is a challenge, especially when it comes to housing. What kind of housing projects do we need to look at if we hope to improve the standard of living of those people? And what type of services will we have to provide, water services and electrification? How will that be affordable to people that we are targeting? Whilst you want to maintain the urban node that does already exist without compromising the people who are there - how do you avoid influx because people are coming to the urban areas in search of a better life and job opportunities - the challenge is then how do we then improve the infrastructure and create an urban environment without trying to segregate them from the mainstream of our cities. I think that becomes a challenge and we need to focus on our urbanisation strategy.

SACN: Is Pietermaritzburg still seeking the big influx of people that started in the 1980s?

Zulu: It's unbelievable. When we became the new capital, we thought we were going to deal nicely with the congestion that we had in our city, but unfortunately instead it has doubled. People are more attracted by the city because we don't do anything in the rural areas where they live. They see opportunity in cities as there is no strategy in place to make their own environment a better place to live and there are few economic opportunities created within those areas for them to get jobs and to be able to enjoy quality of life with the infrastructure that we put in place.

So the real big challenge that we have is how do we begin to do those things without compromising the very new developmental perspective that we have in local government and without trying to say, `are you now creating another special Bantustan type of development by keeping them there, and developing them there.' So those are the challenges we currently have.

SACN: How are the municipalities creating the conditions for economic growth? And what are the major growth sectors? Is tourism development creating more economic opportunities?

Sutcliffe: For us, clearly, the main sectors of growth are the manufacturing base. It's the only city, the only part of the country where manufacturing has not declined over the last ten years. It's slowed down the rate of growth but we're now beginning to experience a real boom. It's interesting, last night we launched a new pharmaceutical company that will be headquartered in Durban, as an example.

It consists of both Cape Town and Johannesburg companies as well, but will be headquartered here. So our manufacturing base been through it's rough patch and we're starting to get the Durban South basin, which is South Africa's biggest manufacturing hub, to work very well.

The second key sector for us is clearly around logistics. The port, the harbour, which is really southern Africa's lifeline. It has about seven times the value of traffic that goes through all the other ports collectively.

With the R40bn that Transnet will be spending, close to half of that will be on the port and the link between Durban and Gauteng.

The third key area for us is around tourism development and that certainly is something that is beginning to sustain itself.

We've always been quite happy that we're not chasing the international buck. The first thing that we want to do is to make sure that we're a great destination for South Africans and that's happening at the moment. You find the thing that sustains our tourism here is in fact people from KwaZulu-Natal, and then it's people from Gauteng, and thirdly we draw on international traffic. We are the third most popular destination in terms of international visitors after Cape Town and Gauteng, but we're the number one when it comes to domestic.

We're obviously increasing the range of products now, so that's part of the bigger strategy of the mountains, the game parks, the other things that our province has, but also the beach tourism and the products like uShaka Marine World, the sporting environment and the fact that you have Africa's only top 100 golf course in Durban. These are very niche markets we're looking at.

And then with the expansion of the ICC, clearly that convention centre traffic. We're looking at hopefully next year getting the World Rally Championships. So we're looking at some very interesting sports and concerts coming through.

Zulu: Leather is one area that has always been contributing to our economy. But over and above that I think that retail development is beginning to play an important role and contribute to our economy, also that leads to property development.

The disadvantage that we have is that we have a situation where that sector is simply managing itself, and there is no strategy in place to make sure that whatever direction that development should take will be in the interest of the rest of the members of the community. It is a sector that's going at a very fast pace and we have taken a conscious decision as council to begin to manage the land disposal policy and to ensure that it is well managed and that it is going to address the needs of our city.

We have identified about 24 sites that we feel we should begin to dispose in the context of ensuring that we address the needs of our people.

We have a situation where certain income levels for example, with residential development, are not catered for by the municipality, and this is a result of how this sector is managing itself with a small profit, and this is needs-based which is a challenge we currently have, but it is contributing quite positively to our economy. And obviously the retail industry is also contributing quite enormously.

But, as I said, we need to put a strategy in place. As government we need to ensure we have a focused development strategy in place. We need to be able to drive our economy and set targets for ourselves for different sectors as to where we want to be in the next five or ten years or so.

SACN: Local government needs that strategic approach in place, particularly to ensure that economic growth delivers the jobs.

Zulu: This is a challenge that we have. One example is that Hullets Aluminium has been developed quite extensively in the last three years or so, but only creates 1% of our jobs, so that doesn't help us unless we expand that sector. There are not enough jobs created because there is no strategy to drive that, and we are not directly involved in determining what we'd like to see happening right here in our backyard. So our focus is to say let's have an economic development route that is managed by a strategy, rather than letting it manage itself, because then you compromise other aspects of your growth like job creation and so forth.

Sutcliffe: We've launched a couple of learnership schemes from Siyaya which is focused on young graduates and a second which is focused on young matriculants who don't have jobs and so our aim there is to, with business, get 5 000 learners who are matriculants who couldn't go technikons or universities to get them placed in businesses in the city and if we could do that, it means at least 5 000 youngsters who at least would have been in a learnership for a year and experienced a job opportunity.

SACN: Msunduzi is now the capital city of KwaZulu-Natal. What are the benefits for the city and the province as a whole?

Zulu: They are basically from a confidence point of view for investors. With the amount of political instability in this province for such a long time, it has affected investors. So one of the benefits is that investors are beginning to take, quite seriously, opportunities that have been there for quite some time, but have never been explored by them because of that particular issue. Now the level of confidence has increased quite tremendously. We now get a number of proposals for development in our city. We are the ones now who decide whom to choose and what are the benefits that should be assigned. We say, well, if you want to develop that particular land and link that into one project. Can you tell us how many jobs will be created by this particular project? If we're not happy we say we'd rather go for another developer.

And obviously the issue of property development and most of the departments provincially are settling in and looking for office space.

They have actually designed a government precinct where they want local government and provincial offices to be located. But that comes with challenges in terms of property development, and residential development for people coming from Ulundi and those from Durban, so they don't live in Durban and travel every day to Pietermaritzburg. The inner city is also seeing a lot of activity. We were under the wrong impression in thinking that people would move from the inner city, when the Midlands Mall opened, but it's the other way around. People are moving into the inner city, and that is also important for our own strategy engagement, that we simply cannot let the inner city die and with it new property development opportunities.

So there is a challenge to ensure that the programmes and strategies we have put in place ensure an attractive city, but unfortunately the magnitude of the people is unbelievable. On Fridays between 12:00 and 16:00 traffic is unbearable. So another challenge is how to improve our traffic flows and our roads development to accommodate the influx we currently have, which we never had before.

And as a result of the capital status, the legislature is sitting right in the inner city, we need to ensure that the traffic flow does not interfere with the impact of the service we provide to the legislature. But there are benefits from an economic point of view, from the retailing sector people are beginning to spend more time in Pietermaritzburg and I don't think we have the capacity as yet to deal with that situation. We are not ready, to be frank for this level of influx. We are trying to develop the capacity to deal with our capital status in a more sustainable manner.

SACN: What is the major thrust of your IDPs and what is your thinking in terms of global competitiveness?

Sutcliffe: Certainly this year we're focusing much more on the programmes, because what happened, in my view, of most cities that have had this same problem, the IDPs invariably start with a list of challenges and those are unemployment, poverty, quality living environments required, sustainability, and then you go on to say these are the things we do and in most of the IDPs, and certainly in ours, there's often something of a disjunction between those so our focus is very much on building those as programmes.

This year, our capital budget focuses on eight themes and is not a capital budget for housing, and a capital budget for water, and a capital budget for electricity instead it serves the eight key programmatic challenges that we have including building quality living environments, building our city as a culture and sporting precinct, and as a place where we invest in alleviating poverty and HIV, and a city that is sustaining the natural environment. So we've now said we'd wrench the programmes out of what exists and so I think that is a big shift that will happen this year.

Our IDP has always been a strategic document so we've never seen it as a document that is trying to explain every business plan that exists and I think as management in the last month we've had, I think 12 meetings already, as top management to narrow down and try and understand every word of those programmes so over the next five or six months this process will continue so it begins to force the programmes to be central, rather than the kind of projects, and individual units.

Zulu: Our IDP - the wish list! Our focus for the next financial year is on service delivery. Our analysis has informed that we have not done very well, and that relates to low cost housing, and also trying to deal with informal settlements. The other focus area we've identified is we've realized we're a flood disaster area and we have been hit hard over the last year, and we'd like to focus on putting in place various strategies to deal with this. Each time it affects houses, and inhabitants, and what is linked to that as well is the environmental aspect, in terms of where people are geographically located, which has a huge impact.

The other area of focus in our IDP is our LED strategy and from there being able to isolate programmes that would definitely create jobs for people in the process, and link with other important stakeholders in developing the programmes we have for our own economy. We are paying special attention to that particular aspect taking cognizance of the fact that even capital status cannot drive itself and having those programmes in place will ensure we service our capital status.

So general service delivery remains a key issue for us. We have huge backlogs from electricity to water. In our budget we have catered for all of those areas and these are very basic services, which if not dealt with, can have a very negative impact.

HIV/Aids is one of the critical areas we have decided to focus on, and continue to implement the strategy that we have developed, and we have just done a review on that strategy. HIV/Aids has a very negative impact not only in our area of jurisdiction, but in the entire continent. We are deciding what best we can do because it's having a negative impact on productivity and the delivery of services. With the current backlogs we have, we can hardly accommodate this situation at this present moment. We also want to make sure that job creation remains a key focus.

SACN: KwaZulu-Natal still has significant backlogs and developmental challenges. Are intergovernmental relations being strengthened to address these?

Sutcliffe: I think this morning we're launching the Premier's Coordinating Forum, even though national legislation has not been passed, it's within the Intergovernmental Relations Bill, so we have a structure where at least the executives are able to be part of it.

So that's a very positive step.

The second thing is, from our point of view, being the largest municipality we do have that responsibility, so both myself and top management are quite involved in particularly some of the smaller municipalities really lacking capacity and assisting them with everything that we can from water to even building some of their housing delivery programmes. So we're quite active in assisting where we can in the province. Water is one of the sectors that we're talking about because the Premier has indicated that he wants us to focus on water delivery around the province and in the next two years we hope with our rural roll-out of 10 000 households a month, we will have delivered water to all households but clearly we want to roll out those programmes across the province now. So certainly the intergovernmental side is starting to strengthen.

Zulu: We are more or less doing the same exercise. We are trying to have a good relationship with the provincial government and that could help us to avoid duplication of the very same resources that we have. We have started to interact with departments like economic development and housing from a service delivery point of view, traditional affairs and local government because there are quite a number of challenges that we have and we want to interact with them to make sure that the programmes we do are somehow linked to what they are doing. And besides the whole notion of different spheres of government has not been out into its perspective from a practical point of view.

We have taken a conscious decision as council to build those relations and identify projects of strategic nature. We are currently working on a project with the Department of Agriculture and Environmental Affairs dealing with environmental issues, social equality issues as well, and we are beginning to receive some funding from them from their own budget of R1.1 million.

So we are beginning to really work together and synergise our efforts in service delivery on the ground and to share expertise as well.

We've had a situation where local government practitioners and their counterparts at provincial level had no interaction taking place. So we are beginning to develop those relationships.

At the end of the day, our objectives are the same, so all we need to do is ensure that there is some sort of formal symmetry. If that is not in place, you will see a lot of duplication taking place, and a waste of resources.

Not only with the province, but also with national government we are saying let's begin to take quite seriously the importance of intergovernmental relations and begin to identify specific projects that could be undertaken between our own municipality and provincial and national level.

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