South Coast Smart City project opposed
The government wants to build skyscraper cities when it can't hold together a little village like Umzumbe and Pennington.
Horrible road conditions and the lack of water supply in the Ugu district are among the reasons why the public is sceptical about being behind the Eastern Seaboard Development project, also known as the African Coastal Smart City.
The Municipal Infrastructure Support Agent (MISA) held a public engagement session on the Eastern Seaboard Regional Spatial Development Framework at the Ugu Sports and Leisure Centre recently.
Paddy Norman of the Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa (WESSA) said he gets very worried when people think this will expand tourism because the tourists who come to the South Coast, love the area as it is.
“When we start building multi-million rand hotels all over the coast, you lose the market and I do not believe that we would be able to compete with areas such as Durban. Durban caters for one type of tourist and we cater for different types of tourists. We have to ask ourselves, if we lose that, who benefits? Also, it is the receiving environment that is so critical. Yes, along the coast we have a number of assets but I think we should also look at the constraints of those assets,” he said.
When President Cyril Ramaphosa presented the project at the Ugu Sports and Leisure Centre recently, he said it is a long-term development plan by government to connect coastal KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape local economies.
“It is never simple enough to undo the effects of the past, we have to embrace the future. In this case, we are embracing the future through development that is smart, environmentally sustainable and that embraces the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” the president said.
Meanwhile, Norman said another issue is water infrastructure.
He asked whether Ugu does actually have water.
“Ugu has a wonderful track record of building pipelines but they are not so good at working out where the water is coming from to put those pipelines and that is a big issue. I look at the road system and it would be wonderful to have some good roads. We need a paradigm shift on finances, what we are seeing is that the income for local municipalities is insufficient to maintain what they already have. Maintenance will kill this totally if we do not get it out,” he said.
Another attendee said the government wants to build skyscraper cities when it can’t hold together a little village like Umzumbe and Pennington.
MISA’s Lisolomzi Sogayise said public engagements will continue until all relevant stakeholders are in agreement.
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