Projects such as the Mooikloof Mega City in Pretoria, the biggest sectional title development in SA’s history, will create thousands of jobs and show that the country is serious about meeting its infrastructure ambitions, says President Cyril Ramaphosa.
The Mooikloof Mega City is a public-private partnership and it is expected to be worth about R84bn, Ramaphosa said at the launch on Sunday.
The residential section is JSE-listed Balwin Properties’ biggest housing project to date and it is projected to be worth R44bn when it is completed in about 2030. It will include up to 50,000 houses.
Ramaphosa said that this and other expected housing and infrastructure projects could encourage new developers to come to the party in SA’s economic recovery.
Under pressure to revive an economy that is set to shrink the most since at least the Great Depression, Ramaphosa has placed infrastructure at the heart of his recovery strategy.
"This is when investors see that South Africans are serious. They are serious about their future. They are serious about where they want to go, and investors then are attracted. They come like moths come to the light," Rampahosa said.
“We are now moving away from cutting ribbons and sod-turning. We are now moving to the implementation phase of every infrastructure project. The infrastructure train is now moving,” he said.
The residential section will generate 115,000 job opportunities through its construction, and comes just after last week’s Stats SA revelation of the loss of 2.2-million jobs in the second quarter with the national lockdown to curb the spread of Covid-19.
The state will fund the development of supporting infrastructure, including the expansion of roads in Garsfontein, which would be funded by the Gauteng government, and amenities including schools, employing thousands of people.
Ramaphosa said the most important aspect of this project was its contribution to “inclusionary housing developments”, which aimed to undo lingering apartheid-era spatial problems such as the 40/40 principle, where the average South African lived up to 40km from their place of work and spent 40% of their time travelling to and from work.
Public works & infrastructure minister Patricia de Lille said that Mooikloof Mega City and other projects were part of the state’s economic recovery plan, which "would be released in coming days".
She said the state needed the support of established and reliable developers to tackle the country's housing shortage.
“This project makes me extremely excited as it ticks all the boxes of what we need to do to address the spatial and economic injustices that still exist as a result of the apartheid spatial planning legacy,” she said.
Mooikloof Mega City has been designed specifically for the gap housing market.
This market can be defined as housing opportunities for people with a combined monthly income of R3,501 to R18,000, in other words those who earn too much to get a free house from the government but too little to qualify for a bank bond.
De Lille said the project was an example of mixed-used, well-located, affordable housing that will finally see the government integrate its cities and “bring people closer to decent housing and job opportunities”.
Balwin, headed by CEO and founder Steve Brookes, started construction on the first phase of Mooikloof Mega City on Saturday.
The “city” is located on the outskirts of the suburbs of Pretoria East. Its first phase will consist of 2,500 units, and could go up to 16,000 units worth R9.6bn.
More units are expected to be added over the next decade until a maximum of about 50,000 units is reached, which will generate 115,000 job opportunities over the lifespan of the project.
The R44bn valuation is based on an average selling price of R600,000 per unit.
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