Johannesburg - Gauteng Premier David Makhura officially opened the new Mall of Africa on Thursday morning as thousands of shoppers continued to stream in for bargains offered by hundreds of shops in “opening sales”.
Makhura said the opening of the mall was “a great day” which had been anticipated by many people and urged the business community to invest in the province.
“Today we open an important part in the face of Midrand. There's still going to be 15 000 low-cost houses that are going to be built around this area. Business people, put money into the economy of Gauteng,” Makhura said.
Situated in Waterfall City in Midrand, Mall of Africa lays claim to the title “the biggest retail facility in Africa”, with more than 300 stores occupying 131 000 square metres of retail space.
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Makhura said the mall linked up with a lot of developments around the province in which the government was partnering with private sector.
“Gauteng is currently a construction site. We are part of the national economy, but there is a lot of money being invested in our provincial economy,” he said.
Makhura added he had embarked on an initiative to reduce the burden of doing business in the province in order to boost the economy and create jobs, starting with cutting the time to get approval for the environmental impact assessments (EIAs).
“I have established a task-team led by MEC [Paul] Mashatile to cut red tape everywhere in doing business. It now takes at least eight months to get EIAs compared to two years before.
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“We are also using government land to attract business investments in many areas around the province and we are putting in infrastructure to support businesses.”
Makhura said about 60 000 jobs would have been created once the whole Waterfall City development was completed. Morne Wilken - CE of real estate capital growth fund Attacq Limited and owners of 80 percent of the Mall of Africa - said it took a total of 36 months to complete the development of the mall.
Wilken said the ultimate goal of the Waterfall City development was “to create a space where people work and play”.
“We believe Mall of Africa will be the tipping point of Waterfall City, putting it on the map of Africa. What we wanted to create with the Mall of Africa was something unique, something that had to do with space. Natural light was also important to us,” Wilken said.
Meanwhile, traffic volumes continued to increase on the roads leading to the mall; the M1 highway was already congested by 9am, with road users expressing their frustration on social media. The grand opening of the Mall of Africa had generated a lot of excitement with shoppers camping outside their favourite retail outlets hours before they opened.
AFRICAN NEWS AGENCY