Zuma wants SEZs to help boost radical economic transformation

South African President Jacob Zuma on Tuesday launched the Maluti-a-Phofung Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Tshiame, Free State Province, saying the SEZ program "is critical to our efforts of radically transforming our economy."

The government and the governing African National Congress (ANC) are fully committed to pursuing and implementing a program of radical economic transformation, Zuma said at the launch ceremony.

"One of the critical components of this radical economic transformation is the notion of a balanced regional economic and industrial development," the president said.

For a very long time, South Africa's economy has and continues to rely on the regional industrial hubs of Gauteng, eThekwini-Pietermaritzburg and the Cape Peninsula, said Zuma.

These regions collectively account for about 70 percent of the nation's Gross Value Added. Many other regions were completely neglected with the result that their development potential was severely constrained.

Many of these regions now lack the critical ingredients for long-term economic and industrial success, such as industrial infrastructure, world class higher education and technical institutions, research and development, roads and rail links, and others, Zuma said.

While the SEZ program may not immediately bring all these ingredients to these regions, it is an important catalytic program that allows South Africa to take the first steps, he said.

Through the SEZs, South Africa also continues to play an important role in the attraction of foreign and domestic direct investment into the economy, said Zuma.

To date, eight SEZs, including the old Industrial Development Zones, have been designated across the country. Already, through the SEZ Program, the government has attracted over nine billion rand (about 697 million U.S. dollars) worth of investments in all designated SEZs.

It is for the very first time that the government develops a SEZ in Tshiame which was once part of the apartheid era Bantustan Industrial Parks designed to sustain the apartheid system of separate development, keeping the black people far away from the city centres reserved for white people, with black people coming to supply labor only.

"We want to change the way our economy is structured currently. Our current reliance on exporting minerals and other raw materials to other countries is a sure recipe for an economy that enriches the few at the expense of the majority," Zuma said, adding that this will just deepen the already high levels of inequality in society.

The government will work harder to ensure that key growth points and regions become centres of industrial competence, Zuma said.

The radical economic transformation program also requires increasing the participation of black industrialists and entrepreneurs in key value chains and industrial sectors of the economy, said Zuma.

"The majority cannot continue to rely on the skills and know-how of the minority, even though these are very important and needed in the economy," he said.

The majority must increasingly produce innovators, investors, entrepreneurs, industrialists, and many other forms of economic value addition, he added. Endit