The incubation of the Musina Makhado Special Economic Zone is a surprisingly long one. Former minister of trade and industry Rob Davies endorsed special economic zones (SEZs) as the new driver of economic growth and development in South Africa as far back as the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in 2012.
The focus on steering South Africa’s development trajectory towards SEZs was preceded by a large number of department of trade and industry and other official delegations visiting China through a SEZ exchange programme funded by the Chinese government. The exchange programme was geared towards re-aligning South Africa’s ailing industrial development zones to fit the SEZ model as part of what the Chinese government likes to call “inclusive development” (alluding to both growth and large-scale employment creation).
The outcome of the SEZ brain-washing exchange is the Special Economic Zones Act of 2014. All SEZs now qualify for a plethora of economic and tax incentives including only 15% corporate tax, vat concessions, water and energy discounts, to name a key few.
The zones are seen as pivotal to ensuring sustainable development. Yet the Musina-Makhado SEZ is the largest development proposed project in South Africa and everything about the extractivist coal-based mega-project is unsustainable. Despite the sustainable development question marks, the zone has been endorsed as a key driver of growth by President Cyril Ramaphosa as far back as 2018 on his official visit to China.
Yet on 1 September this year, at a MMSEZ investor roadshow, the zone was again endorsed by Ramaphosa, and a host of national departments, led by the trade, industry and competition department. Ramaphosa declared the Limpopo province “open for business”. The roadshow coincided with release of the final Environmental Impact Assessment Report, and a final round of public participation.
The MMSEZ environmental impact public participation process 2020-2021
There have been several rounds of poorly executed public participation processes on the Musina Makhado environmental impact assessment (EIA), between September and October 2020, complicated by Covid-19 lockdown regulations. Because of another hard Covid lockdown, the January round of public participation was rescheduled to March. None of these rounds have been preceded by broad information sharing with local residents.
The question of poor broader participation was raised by many interested and affected parties in September and October 2020 and again in March 2021. The fact that newspapers and radio are ineffective to reach rural communities was raised in public meetings. The latest round of public participation reached the pinnacle of public obfuscation.
