South African Government’s Support to Small, Medium Micro-Enterprise (SMMEs): The Case of King William’s Town Area

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the support that the South African government is giving to Small, Medium, Micro-enterprise (SMMEs). A case study was undertaken in the King William’s Town area to establish the status of support to SMMEs. The paper, firstly, examines measures taken by the government to address the constraints of small business development. It further evaluates and analyses the effectiveness of the support given by the South African government to SMMEs. The focus will be on the provision of both financial and non-financial services to the SMMEs by Khula and Ntsika. Although the government remains committed to supporting entrepreneurship through Ntsika and Khula not much has changed in improving the performance of SMMEs. The external desk research methodology was followed. This comprised online desk research (use of the internet) data from funding agencies and published government data. The findings show that the awareness of programmes administered by Ntsika and Khula is low. This proves that the South African government’s support of SMMEs through Khula and Ntsika has not been effective because SMMEs are not aware of the programmes.