2.4. ISSUES OF LEADERSHIP OF LED IN SOUTH AFRICA
2.4.2 Perspectives of LED prior to 2006
Xuza (2007) published an article on what she calls “Practitioner’s perspectives” on the trends of Local Economic Development practice in South Africa for the period 1996 to 2006 (Xuza, 2007:117). The analysis in the article revealed a number of positive and negative developments. From the eye of a practitioner, the article provided a context for the 2006 framework. The framework was meant to provide guidelines that will help to address the gaps that were discovered during the 10 years of implementation of Local Economic Development in South Africa.
The 2006 framework therefore came as a backdrop of Local Economic Development that was unconsciously differentiated in a manner that made rural and small towns focus on agriculture and tourism, while urban centres and cities, in particular, focussed on SMME, with little if no emphasis on the priority centres that drive the local economy and therefore enhance the development of SMME and increase job creation momentum (Xuza, 2007:119). Local Economic Development initiatives were mostly driven by donor and government grant funding. This resulted in a situation where implementation was fragmented and uncoordinated, without due regard to co- operation with non-governmental organisations and community-based organisations, never mind the private sector.
This lack of attempting to build strong partnerships between the above-mentioned structures and local government has resulted in failure to close knowledge, skills and resource gaps. There is little evidence of success of projects that were undertaken individually, while there has been significant evidence of success where a project has been undertaken in partnerships. Money, contrary to popular perception, did not come up as a big challenge, as there was a lot of grant funding from both the government and donors (Xuza, 2007:120). Hence prioritisation of need to build strong partnerships and lead co-ordination of inputs from other spheres of governance comes up as one of the critical leadership outcomes.
Local Economic Development in the first ten years seems to have grown much from poverty alleviation initiated projects, which assisted a great deal in transferring skills
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for survival, enhancing collective decision making and participation amongst members of the community. However, it is on record that this poverty alleviation approach never assisted in the graduation of poverty alleviation oriented projects into sustainable economic initiatives. In this case, it would have been critical to build capacity to transit LED practices from a project based approach, to a comprehensive and holistic approach and towards a broad sustainable development approach employing human and capital resource and having clear outcomes.
In response to the above, the government spent much time focussing on policies meant to attract foreign investments in a top-down style of decision-making. They facilitated attracting specific industries to “specially designed areas in local areas”
(Xuza, 2007:121). They focussed their major effort on export-oriented local industrial developments located mostly in an Industrial Development Zone. Most of these initiatives came to nothing due to officials lacking the capacity to properly read the local market environment.
Following the above-mentioned experiences, most of the initiatives that followed focussed more on the development of indigenous business that takes into account local resources. In response to the situation above, the National Government initiated
“Local Service Centres for LED” and decentralised them to be accessible to all municipalities to help municipalities in the planning and designing of business propositions. However, by the end of 2005, Local Service Centres were still not all operational. A further attempt was also made to establish Sector Economic Development agencies, but they too became aloof from the people and collapsed at an early stage.
Research and development is critical to development in that it provides new knowledge and information about society and the environment in relation to the development imperatives. The period from 1996 to 2006 was also characterised by the absence of “all-encompassing economic development policy” that could be used to direct development and provide a platform for debate through academic practice in tertiary institutions (Xuza, 2007: 123). As a result of this, these institutions displayed inadequacy with regard to research and development, while teaching and training, on the other hand, became more biased to the IDP than on Local Economic Development.
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The training conducted by Sector Education and Training Agency (SETA) was done in isolation of tertiary institutions. Although the agency did well in the creating of understanding of Local Economic Development by practitioners, it has denied learning institutions a learning opportunity from practices, experiences and challenges encountered by Local Economic Development practitioners. As a result of this, the
“profession” and programmes in institution of higher learning remained “poorly arranged” and planned for (Xuza, 2007:118).
The analysis by Xuza (2007) provides a basis for understanding the evolution of Local Economic Development in South Africa, and a framework for the analysis of future Local Economic Development framework and issues to be taken care of in the leadership of a successful Local Economic Development programme. It revealed that in the ten years prior to the initiation of the Local Economic Development National framework of 2006, the practitioners’ perspectives on LED were as follows:
First emphasis was on poverty alleviation induced though donor funding and government grants.
Urban/rural differentiated approach with municipalities of small rural towns focusing on agriculture and tourism and urban centers focusing on SMME development.
No partnerships between government, NGOs and business.
Top-down policy driving foreign investment focusing on processing of export of raw material through Export Processing zones.
Fragmented capacity building where sector training was done without involvement of institutions of higher learning and research while the training was delinked from the integrated formal education system.
This research seeks to establish as to whether there has been any change in the perceptions of practitioners since the advent of the National LED Framework guidelines of 2006.
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