Closure of any business spells disaster for Nelson Mandela Bay
With unemployment in the Eastern Cape nearing 40%, the closure of any business is more than just an economic setback — it is a community crisis.
On Thursday, Goodyear SA announced plans to shut down its plant in Kariega, with 907 jobs at risk.
VW Group Africa MD Martina Biene said every business closure spelt disaster for the manufacturing city.
She spoke at the Women Empowerment Network event hosted by the Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber at the Boardwalk on Friday.
'It is sad for everyone when a business has to close, even more so in the Bay,' Biene said.
'We still have an unemployment rate of 40%.
'Every business that closes in the Bay is a disaster.'
In its report on liquidations in SA, Stats SA revealed that the country had seen 109 business liquidations in April 2025 and 482 business closures since the beginning of the year.
Biene said this spoke to the early signs of deindustrialisation in SA.
She said VWGA purchased tyres from Goodyear, but the majority were imported to keep manufacturing costs down.
'We are looking at buying tyres from India.
'VW needs to keep manufacturing costs low.
'We all must look at local is lekker , but lekker sometimes comes at a higher price.'
Asked what conversations were being held at a national level to ensure the manufacturing business in SA remained sustainable, Biene said a review of the SA Automotive Masterplan 2035 had to happen sooner rather than later.
'On the automotive industry side, we will propose some short-term measures to probably take away the burden.
'Some of the assumptions of the automotive plan in SA and how the sector grows in SA, as well as how much the domestic market plan grows, have not been met.'
Out of the seven OEMs operating in SA, Mercedes-Benz SA in East London is the only one now exporting directly to the US
However, Biene said that due to the interconnected supply chain, any disruption threatened the broader industry.
'We have common suppliers; we share suppliers because the suppliers are not viable if they manufacture for one of us.
'As much as we compete in product in the market, specifically manufacturing, we're all in this together and we need each other and eagerly look forward to more coming in, such as Stellantis, to stabilise the local industry.
'What we're seeing in SA now is that the local automotive industry is on the verge of being replaced and becoming an import market.
'From a VW perspective, I know we're perceived as being expensive, and this is not because we make a lot of money in this country.
'Manufacturing costs a lot in SA.
'The domestic market is small.
'Last year, Suzuki in India produced two-million cars while all seven OEMs here in SA manufactured 600,000.
'Previously, we were competing with products from Europe 15 years ago, under European labour costs and European standards, but now we're competing with Indian and Chinese labour costs.
'The competitive landscape has changed, but we remain the same with our labour costs. Looking at Indian labour costs, then I'm not so sure if I'm competitive.
'If something were to go wrong with us, the Bay would be in deep trouble.'
Chamber CEO Denise van Huyssteen said while investors needed to come to SA, the government needed to retain those already here.
The Herald
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Herald
36 minutes ago
- The Herald
Should NSFAS stop funding institutions that fail to account for student money?
Higher education minister Nobuhle Nkabane says universities and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges owe the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) R11.94bn for the 2017 to 2023 academic period. Universities account for R10.46bn of the debt, while TVETs owe R1.48bn. The amounts are still being reconciled, with institutions expected to sign agreements on assets and liabilities related to student accounts. NSFAS is preparing reconciliations for 2024. This comes amid ongoing challenges with NSFAS funding and student accommodation, highlighted by recent protests at the Northern Cape Urban TVET College over delayed allowances. The DA has urged NSFAS to use recovered funds to ensure students receive allowances on time and to prevent midyear defunding, which forces students to abandon their studies or face hardship.
Mail & Guardian
3 hours ago
- Mail & Guardian
KZN MEC Martin Meyer declares war on graft
KZN MEC Martin Meyer. Photo: Supplied KwaZulu-Natal's department of public works and infrastructure is embarking on a radical digital overhaul in a bid to boost the fight against corruption and transform its operations. This was after several contractors raised concerns about the cost of submitting tenders with the department and the failure by other government departments, such as education and transport, to pay invoices within 30 days of submission as stipulated in the Public Finance Management Act. Contractor Thokozani Dhlomo, the owner of Kwande Dinangwe Trading, said he had been forced to turn to loan sharks to keep his business afloat due to government delays with projects and payments. He did not stipulate which departments had been the problem in his case. 'We are getting too much stress due to a lack of funding — that is the problem we face. I ended up taking money from a load shark, a 'mashonisa'. I took R50 000 and, in that 50 000, they charged me 20%. I ended up paying R100 000 in five months, which means I put half, they also put half. So, I ended up like I was under-quoting the job I did and didn't make any profits at all,' Dhlomo said. 'Now they are delaying payment. They can take about four to five months without paying you.' Deli Nyanda, who owns Lake Show Trading, raised the issue of the high costs small businesses incurred just to submit a tender to the She urged Meyer to consider hosting online meetings instead of requiring site visits on every occasion. Meyer, responding to her request, said he would host these meetings with potential contractors online in future. He added that he had shortened the department's six year programme to completely digitise its operations to a six month timeframe. 'This department will be fully digital by the end of this year,' Meyer said. The digital strategy specifically targets systemic corruption in the procurement process by preventing the manipulation of documents. 'What's the number one way that we notice corruption of the bidding processes? Documents or a page — it goes missing, right? You all know that trick,' he said, referring to how officials make pages in tender applications disappear to disqualify certain contractors. 'Suddenly you just get a notice like, 'Oh, page seven wasn't there; we're disqualified.' With digital submissions that's impossible, so it will help us with corruption, but also, especially our smaller contractors who sometimes don't complete forms correctly. 'How many times have your bids been disqualified because you missed one little box somewhere? You didn't tick that one box because there's a lot [of boxes] but, if it's electronic, you try to go to page seven, it says, 'No, you can't go to page seven,' so it will make sure that everything is done as it should be.' To further enhance transparency, Meyer announced plans for a dedicated reporting mechanism. 'We also want to create a whistleblowing line just for our contractors. So, if there's members of our department, officials who are doing wrong things, we can know about it without you being victimised,' he said. 'I often say this to people, 'I like sleeping.' But, if I do bad things or I don't do my job, I can't sleep at night. I stay awake. So, I'd rather make sure we do things right,' Meyer said. The digital initiative is part of his department's broader vision to rebuild trust. 'Not many people in this province were proud of their department of public works and infrastructure. That's the truth. Many things went wrong in this department; we are still going to have problems. I'm not going to say that we are perfect … but we are improving. We need to build a department that the people of KZN can be proud of. 'Contractors are not people standing with begging bowls at the department. You are our equal partners, because to build KZN better, I need builders, and you are the builders.' Meyer acknowledged that slow payments by government departments were a problem and apologised to contractors 'for the years of suffering you've gone through dealing with this department; payment is the biggest issue'. 'I say this over and over again — a contractor that's not paid is a child that goes to bed hungry and I cannot accept that. So, we're fighting with our client departments. We've released hundreds of millions of rands over the last two months. We are up to date and we are now giving you our undertaking,' he said. 'We are working fighting for client departments to make sure that the 30-day payment is honoured because that's not something nice. It's something that people you owe money to demand of you. If you must pay your debtors within three days, we must do the same, and we will try our very, very best.' Meyer added that his department wanted to hire KwaZulu-Natal companies to do work in the province but many local Construction Industry Development Board-registered 'The department recognises the critical challenges facing the construction industry. The built environment has gone through a terrible few years. The contribution of the construction industry to our GDP in the country has dropped by 33% in five years. We're not employing people in the construction industry,' he said. 'It breaks my heart when I visit TVET [technical and vocational education and training] colleges and they tell me of their 'Economically, things are not going well for the province. We should be the richest province in the country because we are bigger and stronger than Gauteng, we have a harbour that they don't have, and we are cheaper and have nicer weather.' Meyer said climate change and infrastructure adaptation were also key concerns. 'Our old ways of building are no longer working. Schools are being washed away. Houses are being washed away. Roads are being washed away because we've been building the same way now for hundreds of years. We need to find better ways,' he said. He said his department was in the process of concluding a memorandum of understanding with the Western Cape department of public works and infrastructure to collaborate on building climate-resilient infrastrucure.
Mail & Guardian
5 hours ago
- Mail & Guardian
Dybul's dangerous fantasy: South Africa is not ready to transition off Pepfar support
Elon Musk reportedly pushed to secure a licence to operate Starlink in South Africa. Photo: Starlink The Oval Office encounter between South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and US President Donald Trump was no ordinary diplomatic engagement. It was a geopolitical theatre — a collision of clashing narratives, one anchored in misinformation, the other focused on sustaining economic opportunities. Yet beneath the theatrics lay deep tectonic shifts in the global order. If we reframe from spectacle to substance, this moment is not an anomaly, but a strong signal of change. Like a clarion call for transforming not just a bilateral relationship, but the paradigms that govern diplomacy in a fractured world. The spectacle and the system Trump's invocation of the 'white genocide' and 'land expropriation' myths, conspiracy theories rooted in post-apartheid disinformation, transformed the Oval Office into a theatre of post-truth politics. In stark contrast, Ramaphosa anchored his response in evidence and historical nuance. Yet, he was flanked by elites representing a narrow, privileged slice of South African society, many of whom continue to benefit from both apartheid-era structures and the post-1994 democratic order. Ironically, their presence inadvertently bolstered Trump's narrative, leaving Ramaphosa politically and rhetorically isolated. The dissonance in perspectives, most of which were tangential to the pressing structural issues, laid bare a deeper epistemic fault line in international diplomacy. A few days later, this collision of spectacle and geopolitics became more visible, more public and more fraught, as Elon Musk, a South African-born billionaire, reportedly exerted influence over South Africa's domestic ownership laws. His push to secure a license to operate These events expose a critical question — will global relations continue to be shaped by the ideological distortions of dominant powers or can emerging middle powers like South Africa assert a sovereign, historically grounded and futures-oriented voice in shaping global narratives? But to fixate solely on the leaders' exchange is to miss the forest for the trees. This encounter should be situated within four converging systemic dynamics: 1. Weaponised misinformation: The Oval Office moment reflected a global trend in which misinformation becomes diplomatic currency, supplanting evidence-based policymaking with political spectacle. 2. Colonial afterlives : Trump's selective empathy for lower-middle-class white South Africans, while erasing the structural violence of apartheid and ongoing economic inequality, mirrored America's own unfinished racial reckoning. Both nations remain haunted by colonial legacies that continue to shape contemporary power dynamics. 3. Land reform in South Africa: It is central to addressing the enduring legacies of apartheid and colonial dispossession. The government's approach, as embedded in The manipulation of public discourse through misinformation further constrains the potential of land reform to serve as a vehicle for equitable economic empowerment. 4. Geopolitical realignment: As the US recedes into transactional nationalism, South Africa is recalibrating its alliances, deepening its ties with Brics and the Global South. The Oval Office tension is not merely interpersonal; it is symptomatic of a world undergoing seismic geopolitical reordering. Creating pathways out of tension Futures thinking compels us to move beyond linear forecasting toward systemic foresight. How might South Africa and the US transform this tension into opportunity? Rather than reverting to business-as-usual diplomacy, this is a chance to craft pathways — not just to each other, but to the systemic crises unfolding across climate change, technology access, energy transitions and legitimacy: 1. Institutionalise reparative diplomacy: South Africa should move beyond extractive and exploitative trade arrangements, such as exporting unprocessed critical minerals to the US, which disproportionately fuels US industrialisation, towards reparative partnerships grounded in mutual benefit, innovation and structural equity. This shift calls for a Such initiatives should facilitate technology transfer, build local capacity and advance shared economic objectives. A reparative framework would also support greater symmetry in global power relations. South Africa's exports of critical minerals enable the US to secure its supply chains for strategic sectors, including artificial intelligence and military technologies. These partnerships must, however, also foreground South Africa's economic development priorities. At their core, they should promote domestic mineral beneficiation and intra-African value-chain development, imperatives to reducing dependency and advancing economic sovereignty. 2. Defend transparent land reform: The South African government's land reform programme should continue evolving with clear legal frameworks, such as the Expropriation Act, ensuring fairness and promoting inclusive economic development. Redistributing land is only the first step; beneficiaries need title deeds, financial, technical and infrastructural support to make land productive and sustainable while reassuring investors that land reform will not undermine agricultural productivity or economic stability. Crucially, unutilised state and rural land under the jurisdiction of traditional authorities should be integrated into a broader national strategy. Land reform and economic development are not mutually exclusive but mutually reinforcing. 3. Embrace post-Western multilateralism: The US should engage South Africa not as a subordinate but as a co-architect of new governance frameworks, particularly in frontier arenas such as AI ethics, climate and trade diplomacy and global financial architecture reform. Equally, South Africa should guard against surrendering its agency to a declining hegemon operating through outdated diplomatic paradigms. A truly post-Western multilateralism requires that all governments adapt and engage as equals in shaping more just and future-fit international systems. A call for courage and imagination The Oval Office confrontation was not merely a diplomatic rupture; it was a symptom of decaying systems and a crucible of possibility. Futures thinking reminds us that crises are not endpoints, but inflexion points. Here, futures studies are defined as a systematic, transdisciplinary approach to exploring, anticipating and shaping more favourable outcomes by embracing complexity and a plurality of possible trajectories. The Retrofitting established policy frameworks to accommodate Musk sets the stage for a global order where misinformation thrives, alliances fracture and diplomacy is reduced to viral spectacle. But this future is not inevitable. It is a choice. The central question shaping South Africa-US relations is no longer merely whether the two nations can afford to collaborate. Rather, it is how South Africa can most effectively navigate a shifting geopolitical landscape, one increasingly defined not by binary choices, but by the rise of multipolarity, multi-alignment and strategic autonomy. As US diplomacy contends with internal challenges and fluctuating global influence, countries like South Africa and others are exploring other partnerships, such as Brics, opening a spectrum of diplomatic possibilities. These range from deepening ties with the US to expanding South–South cooperation through Brics, to crafting a nuanced foreign policy that engages multiple partners without becoming beholden to any single bloc. A sovereign-respecting relationship between South Africa and the US would depart from the legacy of asymmetrical engagement. Instead, it would reflect the emergence of a multipolar global order in which both countries act as autonomous agents defined not by subordination or rivalry, but by mutual respect, flexible cooperation and a recognition of shared and divergent interests alike. To thrive in an increasingly multipolar global economy, South Africa cannot afford isolation. It needs a diverse portfolio of allies and partnerships. The challenge now is whether Ramaphosa will pivot to the gravitational pull of Trump-era theatrics and Musk's techno-capitalist demands or whether he can seize this moment to reset the terms of engagement with the US on the foundations of sovereignty, foresight and shared prosperity. Letitia Jentel is the senior programme manager and researcher with the Futures programme at the , an independent public policy think tank.
