Chapter 7 Collaborative and cooperative governance mechanisms in Durban
7.5 Findings summary
The findings presented in this chapter have shown that the Durban Aerotropolis consists of stakeholders and partners emerging from the public and private sectors as well as state-owned agency groups. The roles and responsibilities of the stakeholders differ but all participants work together for the success of the project. EDTEA is the government department responsible for championing the development of the Durban Aerotropolis. Its role is to ensure that the project is set up and implemented for the fulfilment of the PGDS. The eThekwini Municipality sees itself as a strategic partner. It provides bulk infrastructure around the Durban Aerotropolis and Dube TradePort precinct.
The KZN Department of Transport commissions studies for corridor developments, takes care of required transport infrastructure and seeks to align spatial plans with transport plans. The Housing Agency of the Department of Settlements focuses on social wellbeing in dealing with issues of spatial equity and promoting inclusive economic development. Tongaat Hulett Property Developers is the owner of the land and plays a role in developing the land. Dube TradePort Corporation is a land owner together with ACSA and is responsible for operation of the Dube TradePort Special Economic Zone and for setting up of the entire Durban Aerotropolis project. TKZN plays a role in creating demand for travel, thereby instilling a sense of confidence for airlines. It is responsible for tourism development, which ultimately has an impact on the development of routes. ACSA is a landowner together with Dube TradePort. The two are in a joint venture in which they develop pockets of land in the Durban Aerotropolis precinct. TIKZN is the primary driver of local and foreign investment in the province. It is responsible for investment promotion in which the Durban Aerotropolis is also promoted as a site of investment. iLembe Chamber of Commerce lobbies and advocates on the
141 implementation of government policy to ensure that iLembe District in KZN (one of the two districts within which the Durban Aerotropolis is situated) remains a business- and investor- friendly environment.
The Durban Aerotropolis also has mechanisms, platforms and avenues through which all stakeholders involved in the project are brought together. These platforms take the form of strategy sessions that led to the vision of the project and deliberations on the vision of the Durban Aerotropolis. There are also formal structures for governance and stakeholder engagement which include the Aerotropolis Executive Committee, the steering committee and the various working groups.
The Aerotropolis Executive Committee provides strategic support and direction in the development of the Durban Aerotropolis. This committee has no decision-making power. The steering committee is made up of members of the working groups. Working Group 1 is responsible for route development and all air related services. Working Group 2 deals with integrated and coordinated spatial planning. Working Group 3 deals with all issues around infrastructure development and provision. Working Group 4 coordinates knowledge support, equitable growth, ICT and smart city development.
The overarching structure for all these governance and stakeholder engagement platforms is the Durban Aerotropolis Management Unit. It oversees and coordinates all stakeholder engagements and ensures that all the working partnerships are sufficiently fruitful for project implementation. The findings also revealed evidence of intergovernmental collaboration as underpinned by and reflected in the set of policies from the different tiers of government, including national and provincial levels of collaboration.
From the discussion above, the collaborative and cooperative governance dynamics are evident simply in the sheer volume of the actors involved. The Durban Aerotropolis is a project championed by the EDTEA, is run by Dube TradePort and is located close to ACSA or King Shaka International Airport but requires the many other actors from the various stakeholder groups to be a success. This is because a project such as the Durban Aerotropolis is reflective of a region with a complex system of overlapping, interrelated jurisdictions – much like a network (Kacowicz 1998). This type of region therefore requires collaborative governance which entails coordination of resources and sharing of information, ideas and power. The extent to which these actors partner and work in collaboration played a crucial role in consolidating the KZN Integrated Aerotropolis Strategy. This strategy is essentially what can be thought of
142 as a development strategy for the region. The efforts of actors collaborating in the Durban Aerotropolis project have been deliberate and have mirrored what Barnes and Foster (2012) define as regional governance. They have done this through agenda framing in which they clarified the vision, goals and priorities of the Durban Aerotropolis that have manifested themselves in this study as what we call form, function and scale. They have weighed support for the agenda put forward, hence their collaboration through the various roles and responsibilities they carry out. Although there may still be inconsistencies or conflicting views in the comprehension of the agenda, the stakeholders know and understand the core vision of the project and what is required of them.
Furthermore, another way in which this deliberate effort for collaboration is evident is in the stakeholders’ ability to decide on the ‘actor groups’ or stakeholder groups that would be suited for the project (Barnes & Foster 2012). They deliberated on stakeholder group composition, leadership and management roles through which they appointed a management structure in the form of the AMU to ensure stakeholder group commitment. The stakeholders worked collaboratively to strategically craft the vision of the project. This is because regional governance involves cooperative development of purposes and goals to be better able to solve a regional problem or seize an opportunity (Barnes & Foster, 2012).
It is also important to note that governance of the Durban Aerotropolis has gone cross-border in the sense of rejecting jurisdictional, sectoral and functional boundaries. To establish and implement decision-making and action it has also encompassed many other institutions or structures and can go still further beyond to involve more that may be suited. Essentially, the presence of actors from multi-stakeholder group highlights collaboration and cooperative governance as a mechanism of RED. As defined Bodhanya (2015), RED is the outcome of generative economic activity through collaborative multi-stakeholder relationships, productive networks and mutually reinforcing relationships drawing on key economic assets and infrastructure that contributes to an increase in the general prosperity of a region.
The collaboration and partnership evident in the Durban Aerotropolis has thus become a sustained and concerted action of policy makers, business and communities to promote the economic health of a specific region. Karlsson and Rouchy (2015:2) recognise that RED requires a region to mobilise its economy and resources to facilitate sustainable development and competitiveness. However, for mobilisation of resources to happen there must be a self- organised steering of multiple agencies, institutions and systems which are operationally
143 autonomous from one another yet structurally coupled due to their mutual interdependence, and this has been the case in regard to the governance dynamics of the Durban Aerotropolis project. There is also a metagovernance agent in the form of the Aerotropolis Management Unit which has assumed the role of coordinating the various actions of the working groups across space, time and domains (Chapple & Montero, 2016).
The governance dynamics evident in the Durban Aerotropolis project attest to presence of social capital that is crucial in complex projects such as this. Chapple and Montero (2016) note that social capital is based on networks of trust and collaboration that can create synergy between public and private sector actors.