The dust has settled after another SA Investment Conference, at which President Cyril Ramaphosa said the country’s problems are in hand and SA “continues to be an attractive investment destination”.
One of the investment pledges featured on the SA Investment Conference’s website comes from something called the Blythedale Coastal Estate, and is listed at R50m. The internet directs you to a verdant coastal heaven of modern, environmentally friendly coastal living.
It looks absolutely great, a large tract of verdant KwaZulu-Natal coastline between Blythedale and Prince’s Grant Golf Estate, ripe for development into a very SA secure estate with frontage on the beach and the Mdlotane River estuary.
But a little bit of digging reveals that the good people of the seaside dorpie of Blythedale, near KwaDukuza (Stanger) on the North Coast, need not fear the influx of earth-moving equipment just yet.
The Blythedale development is now approaching 20 years in the making. Environmental approvals were first sought in 2005, but this is now so long ago that water-use licences are almost certainly out of date. There have been relentless delays, none of which are particularly surprising or egregious.
A land claim was made against the property and the claimants were successful. According to people in the area, discussions about buying the land from the owners have been slow and hard, but ultimately fruitful.
The president’s statements about ‘emerging from a decade of state capture’ are not quite true
I’m told that during the course of this the developer had to go into business rescue and the development — still a going concern according to its website — is currently involved in some kind of stand-off with the KwaDukuza municipality.
It sounds like SA to me, but not the SA Ramaphosa sought to portray in Sandton last weekend. The fact that one internet search and a couple of phone calls is all it takes to establish that the Blythedale Eco Estate is neither a new investment nor an especially successful one makes you wonder about the rest.
In fact, the Blythedale experience is a leitmotif of doing business in this country. In the pages ahead of this column you will have read about the department of trade, industry & competition’s announcement on Friday of another delay in the formulation of a policy to support (or to decide not to support) the manufacturing of electric cars in SA. This is necessary because of surging demand for electric vehicles in our export markets, and the potential for a ban on internal combustion engines in the EU, the UK and other markets.
The industry, which requires decades-long policy certainty to plan its production, was promised a new policy at end-2021, and again at a motor industry conference in October last year, and then again in the budget speech in February. It never happens. In his latest announcement on Friday, trade, industry & competition minister Ebrahim Patel said the policy will be out “by the end of the year”.
In parliament on Friday Patel essentially blamed a fast-moving environment, citing the recent fracas in the EU in which the German motor lobby managed to get the German government to push back on the EU internal combustion ban on the basis that efuels burn in an internal combustion engine but are carbon-free in their combustion and, if manufactured with renewable power, carbon-free in their production.
Lost thousands
It’s not clear why this should slow down SA industrial policy, which ought to be designed to support the manufacturing of internal combustion and electric cars if it remains the policy of the government to support automotive manufacturing in the country.
Policy flimflammery aside, the recent experience of Ford, which lost thousands of cars and bakkies due to power outages in Silverton, and the ongoing struggles of the industry at large to make their business models work in terms of energy supply, logistical logjams and inefficiencies courtesy of the ports and the railways, is instructive.
I understand that when you run a big operation — such as, say, a country — you do the marketing and the maintenance at the same time. I know it’s the president’s job to say what he said in Sandton a week ago, but the thing is if you are asking people to sink their shareholders’ money into local operations it probably helps to understand that they are going to be cynical, to adjust your messages accordingly, and to triple-check that your good-news stories are in fact good news.
The president’s statements about “emerging from a decade of state capture” are not quite true. In fact, we are just entering the era of the consequences of state capture. His statements about the impact of Covid-19 and global market condition may be fair context, but it is what is unsaid that rings in the ears of serious people. The utterly shambolic approach to the energy crisis that is more Days of Our Lives, Cabinet Edition (Gwede and Sputla have fallen out!) than strategic governance, the absurdity of the visa situation and the bedlam at home affairs, the inexplicable political sloth in addressing the issues at Transnet and the unserious approach to the rising panic in the motor industry are what investors can see.
I wish the people of Blythedale all the best. Whatever ails the eco resort’s development is not unique to this little seaside village. It’s hard to invest here. Little wonder it found itself prominently on the Investment Summit’s website — it’s a great example of the investor experience.
• Parker is Business Day editor-in-chief.
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