NEWS: Nelson Mandela Bay: The next big thing - Helen Zille

If you've ever taken a road trip along the N2 through the Eastern Cape, you will know just how incredibly beautiful this province is. Hundreds of kilometers of pristine coastline, interrupted by spectacular river mouths, met by rolling, green hills. It's a breathtaking part of the world, and it's hard to imagine that anyone would ever want to leave.

 And yet many do.


More people leave the Eastern Cape each year than any other province. Between 2006 and 2011, more than a quarter of a million people quit the Eastern Cape for other provinces. While the rest of the country's population is growing, the Eastern Cape has seen a net loss of almost 280 000 people for the ten years from 2001 to 2011. And this trend is accelerating.

There's one primary reason that they're leaving, and that's jobs. At 44,4%, the Eastern Cape has the highest expanded or "broad" unemployment rate in South Africa - way above the national rate of 35,6%. (In the Western Cape this is 25,4%).

Economists have warned that this brain drain does not bode well for the region's economic prospects. Cities that lose people to migration, end up losing out on investment too, which leads to further job losses, more migration and so the cycle continues.

If this is to be halted, the lead must come from the hub that drives the province's economy.

With 44% of the Provincial GRP, Nelson Mandela Bay Metro is the beating economic heart of the Eastern Cape. The metro comprises the city of Port Elizabeth, the towns of Uitenhage and Despatch and the surrounding rural areas. Importantly, it also includes the Coega Industrial Development Zone (IDZ) - a 110 square kilometer industrial complex - as well as the adjacent Ngqura deep water port.

Envisaged to turn Port Elizabeth into a manufacturing and export hub and transform the region's economy, the multi-billion Rand Coega development has yet to deliver on its promise. For years now there's been a steady trickle of reports of new investment, but none of these is the big anchor tenant - the employer of thousands.

Despite the Coega IDZ and the harbour; despite a good network of highways, rail and air transport; despite its enormous potential as a tourist destination, Nelson Mandela Bay Metro has a broad unemployment rate of nearly 37%.

Here is a city that has almost everything it needs to really take off, and yet more than a third of its adult population is jobless. I say "almost everything" because the one thing that is lacking is probably the biggest maker or breaker of investment decisions - and that is good, clean, stable governance.

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