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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2008
Jobs and their location provide the key to an understanding of the contemporary thrust of South Africa's ‘separate development’ policy. Within the country's present space economy, dominated by the four metropolitan complexes of the Southern Transvaal, Cape Town, Durban, and Port Elizabeth, this policy seeks to mould a new geography of employment opportunity for the blacks of South Arica. In this process, public policy-makers are attempting to decentralise some economic activities, particularly in the manufacturing sector, away from the nation's metropolitan hubs, and concomitantly to promote new work centres in, or on the borders of, the designated ‘Bantu Homelands’. The current emphasis in the Republic is upon the generation of industrial employment for Africans at selected sites in these Homelands. This short note explores the immediate problems and long-term prospects of this policy with reference to the Bophutatswana growth point of Babelegi.
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