I WAS invited to attend the Makana Development and Investment Conference last weekend. Makana is a geographically large municipality in the Eastern Cape that encompasses Alicedale, Fort Brown, Riebeeck East, Salem and Seven Fountains. And if you are still no wiser, at its heart is Grahamstown.
The municipality was named after Makana or Makanda Nxele (the left-handed one) who was a warrior and prophet in the early 1800s. In 1819 he led 10 000 warriors on an attack on the British garrison at Grahamstown. He is remembered and honoured, however, as a man of peace and a great patriot who had a love for humanity.
Held at Grahamstown's 1820 Settlers' Monument, it was a follow-up to a conference held some two years ago. Interestingly, the Makana Municipality invited to this and the previous conference, a group known as the Grahamstown Diaspora.
They could be described as Grahamstown aficionados who came from the town originally but are now scattered all over the country, yet remain passionate about Grahamstown.
The conference consisted of a number of speeches providing an overview of the state of the municipality followed by five commissions to plot out future strategies and direction. The commissions were agricultural development; tourism development; mining and mineral beneficiation; commercial and small, medium and micro enterprise development; and property development.
Economy
I must admit to not knowing a great deal about the broader Eastern Cape so this was a great opportunity to observe and learn. While South Africa's economy grew at an annual rate of 2,8 percent a year from 1998 to 2001 (after allowing for inflation), the Eastern Cape grew at 4,3 percent annually.
This obviously has had a major effect on unemployment and Eastern Cape Development Corporation projects have largely been responsible for the 275 000 new jobs that have been created. As a result the unemployment rate in the povince has been reduced from 33 percent in 2004 to 27 percent currently.
Apart from the huge interventions such as Coega that will bring a high degree of sustainability to the province, there is a strong emphasis on smaller projects that are capable of duplication, particularly in the agricultural sector. This makes great sense when one understands that 80 percent of the province is rural and quite undeveloped.
There appears to be strong entrepreneurial thinking for the projects include cotton growing and the construction of the first cotton gin in Adelaide; a massive expansion in ostrich farming, particularly on a black economic empowerment basis; a sugar-from-beetroot project; expanding the aloe industry; starting a major canned snail exporting business; and establishing a number of agri-villages.
Grahamstown and greater Makana
The area was settled thousands of years ago by the San people, followed by the Khoi, who introduced cattle and sheep. They were followed by Nguni people from central Africa and one of the Nguni groups, the amaXhosa, settled in the area in the 17th century.
European settlers arrived in the 19th century. Grahamstown itself grew from a small military village that was founded by Colonel John Graham in 1812 - three quarters of a century before Joburg. He was given a simple mandate by his colonial masters - drive the amaXhosa from the colony, settle a dense white population to keep them out and forbid contact between the two groups.
In 1819 they were almost wiped out in the attack led by Makana but went on to develop the town as an important commercial centre and thriving marketplace. Then came the development of the schools and churches and, of course, Rhodes University.
The town today is a recognised educational, cultural and tourist centre and much of this is down to the work of the Grahamstown Foundation. It has been responsible for making the town something of a Festival City with its annual National Arts Festival, National Festival of Engineering, Science and Technology, National Schools Festival and the Makana Freedom Festival.
One of the municipality's current strategies is to expand on that base and have a major festival at least every second month throughout the year.
History
Grahamstown is a town steeped in colonial history which has provided a unique Victorian built environment. As with many such towns and cities, the street widths were originally determined by the turning circle of an ox-wagon and the resultant very wide streets are lined with low-rise residential and retail heritage buildings.
They are well treed and on this weekend one was still able to enjoy the magnificent purples, reds and blues of flowering jacaranda, erythrina caffra and buddleia trees. (No, I am no tree fundi; I just took photos from which my wife gave me the names of the latter two.) But this does not apply to the entire town area.
One gets a clearer perspective of Grahamstown from the balcony of the 1820 Settlers' Monument, high on a ridge overlooking the town. From here one can clearly see the traditional South African colonial-apartheid layout. Only in this case there is no traditional buffer strip between the "white" town and the "black" township, the one just appears to run into the other.
What is, therefore, so starkly visually apparent is the advantaged versus disadvantaged sections of the town, providing a contrast in extremes. Clearly this, together with very high unemployment, is a major headache for the local authority to correct.
Property
I gathered that there is still, as one may expect from a relatively small town, a lot of protectionism in the attitude of the "previously advantaged" and, understandably, resentment in the other. This came out particularly in the commission on property development, where it was revealed that some 80 percent of all property is held in private hands - for private, read white.
This is a huge and thorny issue to tackle. In addition, money must obviously be ploughed into equalising services and much has been done in this regard already. But there is a long way to go and how does one do this in an area occupied by those who are mainly unemployed and therefore not able to pay for the upgraded services?
Again, if there is ultimately no equity in land ownership (and by equity I mean land holding pro-rata to demographics) then we have not only failed in the democratisation of the country but we are sitting on a time bomb.
That perception was underscored by a very direct and discomfiting input from a member of the Grahamstown Diaspora who had been born and brought up in the township but, through education, has risen to a senior position as an economist at an international donor agency.
She stated how the fusion of the "white" colonial history and the "black" culture actually resulted in people who were quite special. Yet this fusion had been something of a one-way ticket for what continued to dominate Grahamstown, she said, was a colonial attitude.
While black Africans allowed their cultural values to be affected by the colonial past, the colonial attitude remained unyielding. She felt that the strengthening of the culture by black Africans was at their cost, for the resultant culture continued to exclude them.
She provided this quote: "Nothing changes more continually than the past, for the past that influences our lives does not consist of what happened but of what some believe happened."
Alicedale
On the Saturday evening we were taken to Alicedale. This small town owed its existence to the Joburg-Port Elizabeth railway line. It had a branch from Alicedale to Grahamstown and had been a major railway depot. New technology evidently changed that quite some years ago and the town has been slowly dying.
Some of the surrounding wealthy game farms were instrumental in initially breathing life back into it. New investment, including a Gary Player Golf Course attached to a lovely hotel, new community facilities, large plantations of olive trees and the re-establishment of a mohair wool weaving and manufacturing facility, traditional beading and so forth, all added to the revitalisation of the little town.
We were entertained by a local group of Xhosa dancers who have blended the traditional and modern into one of the most explosive and exciting dance displays I have seen.
In all it was a memorable weekend that again emphasised to me how much there is to learn and to exchange between different cultural groups, how starkly our towns and cities have been affected by our history and that the ultimate solutions to so many of our problems must start with major changes of mind-sets.
Regards, Neil
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