South Africa to tap private sector to revive crumbling cities

The government is the biggest owner of real estate in South Africa.

South Africa’s government said it will, for the first time, ask private companies to help revive dilapidated buildings it owns in inner cities in the country’s biggest urban centers.

The government department that manages state assets has identified 16 state buildings in eThekwini — the municipality that includes the port city of Durban, the country’s third-largest urban area — for revival. It will soon publish requests for proposals on how to use the “neglected” properties to better serve residents, said Dean Macpherson, the minister of public works and infrastructure.

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The measure comes as concern builds about the fate of the central districts of cities such as Durban and Johannesburg, which have become bywords for urban dysfunction. In both centers, high rises and other buildings, many of them owned by the state, have been abandoned and taken over by squatters who are extorted by armed gangs.

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The government is the biggest owner of real estate in South Africa.

“The days of state buildings standing empty, attracting crime to communities and chasing away investment is coming to an end,” Macpherson said in a speech in Durban on Wednesday. “The days of the state hanging onto properties it doesn’t need – or is unable to maintain – is coming to an end.”

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The buildings slated for refurbishment in the city of about four million people include the historic Seamen’s Institute Building, which was built around 1900.

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The initiative, a first for the department, will be replicated across the country, said Macpherson, a member of the second-biggest party in the coalition that governs the country.

The minister, who represents the Democratic Alliance, was appointed to his post in June when a coalition government took office after May 29 elections failed to produce an outright winner. He worked on the project with leaders including eThekwini Mayor Cyril Xaba, who represents the African National Congress.

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eThekwini is in KwaZulu-Natal province — the second-biggest contributor to the country’s gross domestic product and second-most populous province. Deadly riots, floods, water rationing and sewage-polluted seas off Durban, one of the country’s most popular holiday hotspots, have weighed on the regional economy in recent years.

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