Volume II - The Northern Cape Provincial Spatial Development ...

• How can government capitalise on complementarities and facilitate consistent decision
making.
In order to contribute to the broader growth and development policy objectives of
government, the NSDP puts forward a set of five normative principles: ∗
(i) Rapid economic growth that is sustained and inclusive is a pre-requisite for the
achievement of other policy objectives, among which poverty alleviation is a key facet.
(ii) Government has a constitutional obligation to provide basic services (social capital) to
all citizens (e.g. water, energy, health and educational opportunities) wherever they reside.
(iii) Beyond this constitutional obligation, government spending on fixed investment
(infrastructural capital) should be focused on localities of proven economic growth and
development potential in order to gear up private-sector investment, to stimulate sustainable
economic activities and to create long-term employment opportunities.
(iv) Efforts to address past and current social inequalities should focus on people, not on
places. In localities with high levels of need and low demonstrated economic potential,
government should, beyond the provision of basic services, concentrate primarily on
social/human investment by providing education, training, and social transfers. It should also
reduce migration costs by providing better information regarding opportunities and
capabilities. This could enable people to gravitate - if they choose so - to localities that are
more likely to provide sustainable employment and economic opportunities.
(v) In localities where there are high levels of need (poverty) and demonstrated high
economic potential, this could be an indication for fixed and social investment to exploit the
potential of those localities.
(vi) In order to overcome the spatial distortions of apartheid, future settlement and
economic development opportunities should be channelled into activity corridors and nodes
that are adjacent to or link with national growth centres. Infrastructure investment should
further support localities that may become major growth nodes in South Africa and the SADC
region to create regional gateways to the global economy (Namibia and Botswana is quite
relevant for the Northern Cape in this regard).
While the idea of focusing government spending on fixed infrastructure in areas with some
potential for economic development may seem to exclude other areas/towns from
development, this is in fact not the case. Different regions and settlements have different
economic potential and the spatial variations in the incidence of poverty are also vastly
∗ The Northern Cape Provincial Growth and Development Strategy (which inspired the brief for this Provincial
Spatial Development Framework) is perfectly in line with these NSDP principles (NC PGDS, Draft 3, 2010).
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