Atlantis, Western Cape

Atlantis is a town in the City of Cape Town Metropolitan Municipality in the Western Cape, South Africa. Atlantis is 40km north of the Cape Town Central Business District (CBD). As of 2011, it has 67,491 residents. Unemployment, lack of housing and crime are major challenges in the area.History of AtlantisThe suburb of Atlantis was established during the 1970s by the Apartheid government as an industrial centre and a community for the coloured population of Cape Town under the infamous Group Areas Act. In order to attract industry and residents to Atlantis the government introduced various incentives to attract manufacturing firms via an elaborative system of relocation tax credit. In its heyday in the early to mid-1980s there were approximately 50 industrialists in Atlantis employing people drawn from nearly 8 000 households. These industries included large manufacturing concerns such as Teledex and Atlantis Diesel Engines.Manufacturing activities in Atlantis declined with the termination of the incentive programmes and the defence manufacturing contracts from the mid-1980s. The withdrawal of incentives significantly reduced the attractiveness of the area and while Atlantis has since been through a series of mini economic booms and busts the trend declined in the economy of the area. A new and green growth path for Atlantis Currently, only about 3% of the original companies still have business in Atlantis but numerous new factories and businesses have started to operate in Atlantis. Over the past three years over R1bn has been invested into Atlantis by large multinationals. Hisense opened a factory in the town in June 2013 injecting ZAR 350 million into the first phase of the Atlantis plant, creating 300 production positions and accompanied by a skills-transfer programme led by Hisense technicians and engineers from China.