Abstract

South Africa is undertaking a review of policies and programmes to ensure the participation of the black majority in the economy and thus address the poverty, unemployment and inequality bedevilling areas where the bulk of the black community resides. The situation is dire because of two recent credit-rating downgrades by Moody’s and Fitch, the Covid-19 pandemic, and fact the country is already in a technical recession. The stimulation of entrepreneurship and the capacitation of small businesses to improve lives has proved to be successful world-wide; it could be the same for the more than 47 million living in informal settlements, townships, and rural and peri-urban areas in South Africa. While this looks like a race against time, it is not. The Gauteng Provincial Government already has a foot in the water having initiated such a strategy in 2014; early indications are that this should extended to become a national initiative.