The new South Africa has serves as a living laboratory for democracy and local economic development. As part of the democratic movement that swept South Africa starting in 1994, the city of Pietermaritzburg-Msunduzi was created from the previously more developed, white-controlled central borough--including a significant, segregated Indian population--and the surrounding, less developed black townships. The new city, with a population of 350,000, is located near Durban in the Kwa-Zulu Natal province in the southeastern part of South Africa. Its major industry, which was declining at the time of this project, is the manufacture of footwear.
At the time of the partnership, Pietermaritzburg-Msunduzi found itself at a juncture somewhat similar to the situation that Hampton, Virginia, faced in the early 1980s. Hampton, an eastern seaboard city with about 140,000 residents, was considered a second-rate community at that time. The city had high taxes, poor job opportunities, declining funding for local schools, a decaying downtown, inadequate cultural and recreational facilities, and limited citizen involvement in addressing the city's problems.
However, by forging alliances among business, government, and community groups, Hampton had established a new vision and achieved a phenomenal renaissance through numerous economic and community development initiatives. It was because of this renaissance that Hampton was selected to partner with Pietermaritzburg-Msunduzi.
The partnership focused on sharing materials for and approaches to successful economic development in collaboration with private business and community groups. The key challenges for Pietermaritzburg-Msunduzi included extending basic infrastructure and services to the formerly outlying areas; developing more efficient land use patterns; enhancing health, educational, and job training opportunities; and stimulating the local economy. To this end, Pietermaritzburg-Msunduzi promoted strategic coalitions with business and community organizations to support social and economic development. These coalitions were similar to Hampton’s "community partnerships," which had been instrumental in guiding the city's policymaking process for more than 20 years.
Pietermaritzburg-Msunduzi pursued a number of reengineering strategies to support economic development, including the restructuring of council committees and city departments. The local council adopted an economic development vision statement, and the council's Integrated Development Plan incorporated the Hampton model, which identified economic development as the catalyst to generate revenues to enhance service delivery, thereby augmenting citizens' quality of life. In addition, cooperative business and community alliances were expanded to devise recovery strategies for the declining footwear industry and to develop a public-private partnership policy.