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

Northern Cape PSDF
Volume 2
Office of the Premier &
Department of Rural Development & Land Reform
December 2011
settlements, cities and city‐regions to realise their potential to support shared growth, social
equity, as well as environmental sustainability as key components of our national agenda.
The NSDP has been controversial with some since its release in 2003. In the Northern Cape it has
also been subject to critisism and questions primarily due to its perceived potential impact on so‐
called ‘areas lacking in economic potential’ such as the Karoo and Kalahari. Atkinson (2008:4)
believes that such areas will ‘continue to be starved of government funding and development
effort’ and that the NSDP ‘will unfortunately become a self‐fulfilling prophecy – it will reinforce the
process of underdevelopment in backward areas. This will have the unintended consequence of
intensifying poverty in these areas, or encouraging out‐migration to the cities.’
The PSDF recognises the critisism and potential shortcomings of the NSDP. However, it builds upon
the sound notions, principles and guidelines put forward in the latter in order to achieve
sustainable development throughout the Province in an equitable manner and within the
parameters posed by the various form of capital vested in the Province (refer to Chapter D.2.4).
D.1.3.2 NORTHERN CAPE PROVINCIAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY (PGDS)
In response to the social and economic development imperatives yielded by an analysis of the
socio‐economic profile of the province, the following primary development objectives have been
identified in the PGDS:
• Promoting the growth, diversification and transformation of the provincial economy;
• Reduction of poverty through social development;
• Creating the required levels of human and social capital;
• Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of governance and development institutions;
and
• Enhancing infrastructure for economic growth and social development.
The PGDS cautions that certain sub‐sectors of the mining industry in the Northern Cape have
peaked and that downscaling is underway in especially the copper and diamond mining industries.
This results in an urgent need to identify and promote alternative economic activities in these
areas and settlements which have been dependent on income from minerals in the past. Declining
settlements require an in depth assessment which includes a review of urban rural linkages and
the development of clear criteria appraising their long term sustainability. When this is established
dedicated measures will need to be put in place to rejuvenate them. It is likely that it may not be
possible to turn certain of these rural settlements which have lost the economic rationale for their
existence around (Northern Cape Rural Development Strategy Paper, 2010).
The PSDF is to address the current situation in the Northern Cape as described in the PGDS. The
envisaged Northern Cape Spatial Development Framework should indicate as to what should
develop where, how and when. It should provide a means to guide strategic decisions relating to
the location and distribution of resources in time and geographic space. The PSDF will be an
enabling mechanism that responds to and fully complies with the NSDP.
This also corresponds with the Northern Cape PGDS which has committed the province to a vision
of ‘building a prosperous, sustainable and growing provincial economy, to reduce poverty and
improve social development’. It further clearly states that the PSDF must not only give effect to
national spatial development priorities but it must also set out a series of provincial, district and
local development priorities for the space economy of the Northern Cape. In so doing, the PSDF
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Dennis Moss Partnership