Document: Evaluating Local Economic Development in Giyani Town

The end of the apartheid regime in South Africa during the mid 90s made it all so vivid to recognise
the indelible economic and social strains that the country is faced with. This has been a result of
poor macro-economic management and distorted policies of an extremely centralised apartheid government. With a new democratic Nation, various attempts were/are made to rectify the wounds suffered by the country and its citizens during pre and post apartheid era. Developmental initiatives soon came to place to bridge the gap of inequality between the citizens.

In South Africa Local Economic Development (LED) takes its role as a restructuring tool to address economic and social multi-faceted challenges that the country is faced with. LED is perceived as a strategy for local people to work together to harness local economic growth and sustainability in order to create ample job opportunities and build up the local economy to reduce the main social challenges, unemployment and poverty. LED has been encouraged for almost two decades in South Africa with the hope that bottom-up initiatives are more likely to work than centralised top-down approaches. With various policies and LED strategies in place, LED has produced a limited number of success stories. Blame has been put on national government for its slow delivery of basic services, municipalities for their inability to implement LED strategies and communities for their mindsets and resource constraints. The aim of this study is to evaluate LED in relation to social welfare upliftment in the South African context, identify and explain the real failures of LED and respective challenges that hinder social progression.

This study is mainly focused on a small rural town in Limpopo province called Giyani. The Greater Giyani Municipality (GGM) was established in terms of the Municipal Structures Act 117 of 1998. It has adhered to the Municipal’s System Act of 2000 and has the Integrated Development Plan as its masterplan for reaching developmental mandates. Over the past nine years GGM has invested millions of rands into LED projects and programmes which have failed dismally to produce sustainable employment and eradicate poverty. What then is the use of LED in such an area if it is unsustainable and unfeasible? With the findings, this paper looks at other alternatives of alleviating poverty and creating employment.