Since 1994, with the dawn of democracy, South Africa has remained with the challenge of
reintegrating itself into the global economy and addressing the imbalances created by the
apartheid regime. There have been a plethora of policies underpinned by neo-marxist and
neo-liberal ideals that have been adopted by the state in order to promote economic
growth and poverty alleviation. Amongst these policies are the Local Economic
Development (LED) policies which have been aimed at growing local economies as well
as to uplift previously disadvantaged groups. South Africa has been experiencing
difficulties in finding a balance between developing pro-growth and pro-poor LED
strategies and this has led to the criticism that ‘LED strategies in the country tend to be
pro-growth rather than pro-poor’ . Due to this argument, the role of LED as a tool for
poverty alleviation has therefore been challenged and this research report stems from that
concern. The purpose of this research report is explore the concept of pro-poor LED in
South Africa and to investigate how it is able to contribute towards poverty alleviation at a
local context. The study area, Mbombela Municipality, forms the basis for this
investigation in the exploration of four aspects of LED, namely; provision of services,
infrastructure development (roads), job creation and business creation. The finding is that
LED in Mbombela has not yet been able to impact on poverty alleviation significantly and
this is due to the municipality’s lack of effective pro-poor strategies, poor implementation
of projects and lack of resources and capacity.