Close to the Heart of Durban

The Cato Manor Development Project is strategically located five kilometres west of the Durban city centre. Durban, which lies on the eastern seaboard of Africa, is the largest metropolitan area in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, and the second largest in South Africa. Cato Manor encompasses an area of 2 000 hectares and is bordered in the north by the N3 freeway which leads inland towards Gauteng, the financial and industrial hub of South Africa. The Project area is bisected by the national N2 freeway which leads to the Cape Province in the south and Mozambique in the north, making Cato Manor one of the most accessible areas in the Durban Metropolitan region.

HISTORY
Cato Manor has been settled since the 1650s when the area was inhabited by numerous small-scale chiefdoms. In 1843 George Cato, the first mayor of Durban, was given the land which became Cato Manor Farm. After World War I, the land was subdivided into a number of smallholdings. These were later sub-let to indentured Indian labourers after they were freed from their labour contracts on the sugar plantations. Gradually the settlement grew, particularly during World War II, with the influx of African residents into Durban. Indian market gardeners began to rent their land for settlement purposes and as a result Cato Manor's population grew to about 150 000 during the 1950s. After the promulgation of the Group Areas Act in 1955, the entire population was forcibly removed to the racially exclusive African and Indian townships of KwaMashu, Umlazi and Chatsworth. By the late 1960s most of the area had been emptied. It remained largely unoccupied for the next 20 years. As the tide turned in South Africa during the years 1989 to 1993, a renewed interest in the re-development and resettlement of Cato Manor led to the establishment of a multi-party negotiating forum to create a policy framework for the re-development of Cato Manor. This led to the formation of the Cato Manor Development Association (CMDA), a Section 21 company, to act as a vehicle for the delivery of the Project as laid out in the policy framework. The CMDA was registered in 1993 and attained a full-time staff capacity in 1994.

THE RDP and the european union
In 1995 the Project was designated a Presidential Lead Project of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), under a programme targeting the renewal of key urban areas long neglected by the apartheid regime. In 1997 the Cato Manor Development Association received substantial funding from the European Union as part of the EU's Programme for Reconstruction and Development in South Africa.

KEY OBJECTIVES
The key strategic objectives of the Project are to create an efficient and productive "city within a city" targeting principally the poor and marginalised residents of Durban; to provide housing and security of tenure; to reduce existing infrastructure and service disparities; and to establish safe and secure living and working environments with ample economic opportunities. These objectives are being achieved through the delivery of an integrated development project whose key foci are the delivery of housing; social, educational and recreational infrastructure; land reform; local economic development and human skills development. Consisting of 900ha of developable land, the Project targets a yield of 25 000 housing units (accommodating 150 000 people) and the creation of 25 000 permanent jobs.

PUBLIC SECTOR PARTNERS
the Cato Manor Project's principl public sector partners in the development are the National Department of Housing, the European Union, the Kwa-Zulu Natal Provincial Government, the Durban Metropolitan Council, the North Central, South Central and Inner West Local Councils and the cities of Leeds and Rotterdam.

CURRENT STATUS
The Project is currently moving rapidly towards a peak in the public sector investment phase (see Figure 2). Total public sector investment since inception of the Project to June 2000 stands at R256 million. Cumulative private sector investment in the Project is currently some R20 million. Rapid increases in the rate of the private sector investment are anticipated over the next two years. During the 1999/2000 financial year public sector investment totalled R84,7 million. Annual capital investment has risen sharply over the development period as shown in Figure 3.