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COVID-19 has widened the gap between cities and rural areas

12 October 2020 | Story Andre Damons

Prof Ivan Turok, National Research Foundation research professor at the University of the Free State (UFS) and distinguished research fellow at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC).

New evidence provides a detailed picture of the extraordinary economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. All regions lost about a fifth of their jobs between February-April, although the cities began to show signs of recovery with the easing of the lockdown to level 3. Half of all adults in rural areas were unemployed by June, compared with a third in the metros. So the crisis has amplified pre-existing disparities between cities and rural areas.

Prof Ivan Turok, National Research Foundation research professor at the University of the Free State (UFS) and distinguished research fellow at the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), and Dr Justin Visagie, a research specialist with the HSRC, analysed the impact of the crisis on different locations in a research report (Visagie & Turok 2020).

The main conclusion is that government responses need to be targeted more carefully to the distinctive challenges and opportunities of different places. A uniform, nationwide approach that treats places equally will not narrow (or even maintain) the gaps between them, just as the blanket lockdown reflex had adverse unintended consequences for jobs and livelihoods.

According to the authors, the crisis has also enlarged the chasm between suburbs, townships and informal settlements within cities. More than a third of all shack dwellers (36%) lost their jobs between February and April, compared with a quarter (24%) in the townships and one in seven (14%) in the suburbs. These effects are unprecedented.

Government grants have helped to ameliorate hardship in poor communities, but premature withdrawal of temporary relief schemes would be a serious setback for people who have come to rely on these resources following the collapse of jobs, such as unemployed men.

Before COVID-19

In February 2020, the proportion of adults in paid employment in the metros was 57%. In smaller cities and towns it was 46% and in rural areas 42%. This was a big gap, reflecting the relatively fragile local economies outside the large cities.
Similar differences existed within urban areas. The proportion of adults living in the suburbs who were in paid employment was 58%. In the townships it was 51% and in peri-urban areas it was 45%.

These employment disparities were partly offset by cash transfers to alleviate poverty among children and pensioners. Social grants were the main source of income for more than half of rural households and were also important in townships and informal settlements, although not to the same extent as in rural areas.

Despite the social grants, households in rural areas were still far more likely to run out of money to buy food than in the cities.

How did the lockdown affect jobs?

The hard lockdown haemorrhaged jobs and incomes everywhere. However, the effects were worse in some places than in others. Shack dwellers were particularly vulnerable to the level 5 lockdown and restrictions on informal enterprise. This magnified pre-existing divides between suburbs, townships and informal settlements within cities.
There appears to have been a slight recovery in the suburbs between April-June, mostly as a result of furloughed workers being brought back onto the payroll. Few new jobs were created. Other areas showed less signs of bouncing back.

Overall, the economic crisis has hit poor urban communities much harder than the suburbs, resulting in a rate of unemployment in June of 42-43% in townships and informal settlements compared with 24% in the suburbs. The collapse poses a massive challenge for the recovery, and requires the government to mobilise resources from the whole of society.

News Archive

UFS hones focus to nurture world-class research - Business Day

2006-02-10

Sue Blaine
THE University of the Free State plans to concentrate academic study in five areas to strengthen its status as a research institution, the university said yesterday.

The Bloemfontein-based university will focus on areas it classes as development (economics, health, literacy and other human activities) and social transformation — an analysis of how South African society is changing from a philosophical and political viewpoint.

The other three research areas are new technologies, water resources and security, and food production and security.

“It makes sense to concentrate the university’s human resources, infrastructure, financial resources and intellectual expertise,” said university rector and vice-chancellor Prof Frederick Fourie.

The move introduces a style of research that matches international trends.

Universities in Canada, Britain and Australia are setting up their research departments in this way.

In SA, the universities of Stellenbosch, the Witwatersrand, Cape Town and KwaZulu-Natal have embarked on similar strategies.

Fourie gave the example of his alma mater, the US’s Harvard University, whose Nanoscale Science and Engineering Centre is an example of “clustering” on a larger scale.

The centre is a collaboration with Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California, Santa Barbara, the Museum of Science, Boston, and universities in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Japan.

Fourie said the modern research world was so diverse and complex that no university could cover all bases so it was better to establish areas of expertise that made it different from its peer institutions.

Having scientists and researchers work in teams meant certain issues could be researched and developed in a multidisciplinary manner. “I think it’s the only way in which any university can excel. This will help SA become world class in selected areas,” Fourie said.

It is in chemistry that the cluster model has already had its most visible results, with a slice of the university’s on-campus pharmacological testing company Farmovs, established in the 1980s, sold to the US’s Parexel International.

The company is one of the largest biopharmaceutical outsourcing organisations in the world, providing knowledge-based contract research, medical marketing and consulting services to the global pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device industries, according to Biospace, an internet-based company providing resources and information to the life science industry.

President Thabo Mbeki, in his state of the nation address last Friday, committed government to allocating more resources to research, development and innovation, and increasing the pool of young researchers in SA.

He said government would “continue to engage the leadership of our tertiary institutions focused on working with them to meet the nation’s expectations with regard to teaching and research”.

The university used to be home to several A-rated scientists, who are considered by a peer review, conducted by the National Research Foundation, to be world leaders in their fields, but had lost them to other institutions. Fourie hopes to lure them back, and with them postgraduate students and funding for their work.

“At universities where you get a star researcher they tend to attract people and funding; if they leave they take that with them,” he said.

Fourie said R50m would be spent on the project, with some already spent last year and the last disbursements to be made next year.

There is R10m in seed money to gather experts and improve equipment and infrastructure, and R17m has been invested in chemistry equipment and staff.

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