The failure of the R536-million DCD Wind Towers facility, established in the Coega Special Economic Zone in 2013, has become the poster child for the damage inflicted when South Africa’s political infighting and intrigue gives way to policy uncertainty and stalled implementation. The investment made sense on several levels: it was aligned with the global energy transition; it created 140 manufacturing jobs in an economy desperate to re-industrialise; it was established to produce a key component for a sector whose growth was underpinned by the country’s official electricity policy; it served a market growing in confidence in light of the international acclaim being showered on the procurement model facilitating its expansion; the activity was supported by an industrial policy that sought to unlock green manufacturing; and it had the financial backing of the State-owned Industrial Development Corporation and the province-owned Coega Development Corporation.
