The Future?

The vision of the Durban Metropolitan Council is that,

• "By the year 2015, metropolitan Durban will be a thriving world class industrial and commercial center, an attractive tourist destination and the gateway to KwaZulu-Natal and Southern Africa.
• "It will be a clean and safe environment with full, effective employment, with its residents living in acceptably serviced housing, and with a generally high quality of life that can be sustained.
• "Democracy and tolerance will be an established way of life in a united metropolitian area, with a high level of service and development orientation, and civic pride."

These are lofty goals. Too lofty, perhaps, to be achieved in the span of just fifteen years.

The first part of the vision will probably come to pass, if it hasn't already. The DMA is already the central place for KwaZulu-Natal and is quickly becoming more central for the country of South Africa. In the next several years the DMA will probably see its industry wane due to decentralization and competition from abroad, yet in the same time span will see its commercial, financial, and tourism activities experience growth that outpaces the decline of industry. The completion of the new international airport in 2010 will increase the annual air traffic through Durban to an estimated five-and-a-half million passengers annually. The tourism and commercial segments of the economy will definitly benefit.

The second and third components of the vision will most likely not be realized in fifteen years, although improvements will probably be made. With such a significant portion of the DMA's population living and working informally, it seems next to impossible that enough jobs will be created in the formal economy to employ the 46% that are currently unemployed. Furthermore, the Durban Metropolitan Housing Department hopes to provide 17,000 new housing units in the next ten years, a number that is certainly significant but not nearly enough considering that there are over 150,000 informal dwellings in the DMA. Lastly, the terrible memory of the apartheid era runs deep, and despite the wonderfully idealistic efforts of the organizations such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the wounds will take generations to heal. The stain of apartheid will not leave South Africa until the economic disparities created by the system have been washed away. Unfortunetly this is not likely to happen for a long time.