THE City of eThekwini is working on rebuilding and re-engineering the city to attract international tourists and to put the city back on the international map.
Speaking in a panel discussion titled “Durban is on the move: Zooming in the City’s commitment to tourism development for tomorrow’s travellers” at Africa’s Travel Indaba at the Exhibition Centre in Durban, eThekwini Municipality City Manager Musa Mbhele said the City was working to regenerate.
“You see, when the post-apartheid cities opened up for more people, there was pressure particularly on infrastructure and buildings. As a result, most cities experienced somewhat of a decay.
“What we’re doing now under the inner city regeneration project is to regenerate,” said Mbhele.
He said the city was working on investing and upgrading the public realm, dealing with bad buildings in the city, sorting out different land uses and ensuring that there is harmony in different land uses as part of efforts to bring the city back on the international map.
“We have got exciting programmes. We have divided the inner city regeneration into 18 different work streams covering issues of security, covering issues of upgrades of infrastructure across the board, just to ensure that when people come to the centre of Durban, they experience how the pride of the Zulus is expressed here,” said Mbhele.
The city manager also revealed that it has just over R3 billion worth of investment into new hotels in the city in the pipeline from private investors.
“But over and above that, we’ve got a couple of billion rand of major projects, catalytic projects that are already taking place in this city. That can only come out of a good partnerships that we have worked on over a number of years,” said Mbhele
He also revealed that the city has worked with investors by supporting them in terms of the regulatory approvals of their plans and giving them financial incentives to ensure that they invest in city to show that the city is welcome to more investors.
The city manager also highlighted that the city has spent about R700 million in investment and upgrading of water and sanitation infrastructure and is planning on spending another billion rand dealing with other aspects of infrastructure, including the widening of roads in the inner city to improve accessibility.
“More importantly, we are very big on investing in security. We want to ensure that as Durban becomes South Africa’s playground, when people come here they feel safe, so we are employing more metro police, buying more vehicles, we are investing in the Fourth Industrial Revolution kind of security technology, and what we have basically done, we have also ensured that we create job opportunities for young people to participate in this space,” said Mbhele.