Uitenghage, and industrial city not far from Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape is South Africa's Detroit. It has long been the center of South Africa's automobile production, with companies such as Volkswagen having a heavy presence. Recent reports indicate that VW is planning to shift production of right-side-drive VW Golf models for the Asia-Pacific region from Uitenhage back to Wolfsburg, not far from Frankfurt.
Naturally VW is selling the plan as an attempt to maximize efficiency and to allow the Uitenhage producers to do what they do best. But any time a major manufacturer, especially one as central as the automobile industry, decides to shift production away from South Africa, it is cause for some concern. South Africa on the whole has an impressive record of economic growth since 1994, but the economy assuredly is fragile enough that news such as this might have an unpleasant ripple effect.
