ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the implementation and effects of regional development planning in the Eastern Cape in the period from 1940-1993. Assertive, ‘top-down’ regional development planning was one of the distinguishing features of the policies of the white minority government which held control in South Africa. Future policies have to be defined in the country, but whatever else, it is apparent that prevailing levels of poverty in the apartheid created Homelands justify some form of support for such regions in order to address the desperate legacy of apartheid which prevails there. The catalyst initiating a more effective form of regional development came in 1955 with the publication of the Tomlinson report on the Homelands. In 1981, owing to the poor results which had been achieved by previous endeavours and in an attempt to ensure the survival of apartheid policies in a new era, the state launched its ‘Regional Industrial Development Programme’.
