2010 was supposed to be South Africa’s year, but with production of everything from vuvuzelas to the 2010 World Cup mascot, Zakumi, being outsourced to China, discussions around whether increased trade with China is good for us has intensified. Sharon Davis investigates whether the ANC’s open-door policy to trade with China is something to lose sleep over.

China has overtaken Japan as the world’s second-largest economy, and is well on its way to becoming a world economic super-power. Although slowing to fend off inflation-related issues its red-hot economy, which continued to grow at around 9% during the recession, is expected to outstrip the US to become the world’s largest economy by 2030.

By 2010 China had replaced the US as South Africa’s largest trading partner. Our mineral-rich country exports USD 5.5bn a year in minerals to China and has received substantial Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) – most notably the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China’s USD 5.5bn investment in South Africa’s Standard Bank in October 2007, which remains the largest Chinese investment in Africa

Fifteen black youths from the Mquatsheni community in a rural South Africa, where the KwaZulu-Natal province borders Lesotho, worked alongside 12 whites from Europe and the US in April to dig and plant vegetable gardens for those affected by HIV and AIDS.

Although KwaZulu-Natal is the third-smallest province in South Africa, occupying only 7.7% of South Africa’s land area, it is home to slightly more than 20% of the population and is the second largest provincial economy and of growing strategic and economic importance.

According to Trade and Investment KZN (TIKZN) the province contributes R324bn (at current prices) or 16.2% of South Africa’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) while the Durban metropolitan region alone contributes about 12% of national GDP and the province potentially as much as 18% to 19% of national GDP according to the Durban Investment Promotion Agency (DIPA).

Manufacturing is the largest sector in the provincial economy contributing between 21% and 25% of provincial GDP, followed by the business service industry at around 18%, trade at around 18% and financial services at around 15%.

Russell Curtis acting CEO of DIPA, a municipal-run investment promotion agency, says that manufacturing has been hardest hit by the current global economic recession and that because of the large percentage it plays in KwaZulu-Natal’s economic mix, the province has been disproportionately affected.
 

Since his inclusion in the Forbes World Billionaire List in 2008 as the 503rd richest man in the world, South African mining magnate Patrice Motsepe has attracted both admiration and envy.

While branding him as one of the new rich black elite to benefit from Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), critics ignore the fact that he turned from being a successful mining lawyer to a successful mining businessman, winning several business awards before the introduction of BEE. They also ignore an entrepreneurial family background and much hard work, and the fact that Motsepe’s uncle is the leader of a Tswana tribe known as the Motsepe tribe.



Motsepe was born in his mother’s hometown, Soweto, on Jan 28th 1962. He soon moved to rural Hammanskraal, north of Pretoria, where the apartheid government had banished his father, Augustine Motsepe. There his father established a successful grocery store and went on to open a beer hall and a restaurant, giving Patrice an early induction into the business and life skills that have seen him achieve many firsts.