A plant that built more than cars
When the first Volkswagen Beetle rolled off the Kariega line on 31 August 1951, South Africa was a very different country. The factory itself was older still, established in 1946 as South African Motor Assemblers and Distributors. Seventy-five years later, the same plant is still producing, still exporting and still expanding, a rare corporate continuity that says something important about South Africa itself.
At the company’s 75th Anniversary Gala Dinner on Monday evening, President Cyril Ramaphosa, Nelson Mandela Bay Executive Mayor Cllr Babalwa Lobishe, Volkswagen Group Africa chairperson and managing director Martina Biene, and Volkswagen brand chief executive Thomas Schäfer gathered at the Kariega plant under the theme “A Legacy in Motion: Honouring the past, celebrating today, driving tomorrow.” The celebration marked a milestone that ran deeper than corporate heritage: it was a statement about investment confidence, industrial stability and the future of manufacturing in South Africa.
The production record makes the case on its own. Over 75 years the Kariega plant has produced nearly 40 different models and built more than 4.8 million vehicles, of which more than three million were made for South African buyers. Today it is the only factory in the world that manufactures the Volkswagen Polo, exporting the model to 38 countries while also building the Polo Vivo for the local market, and it produced more than 156 000 vehicles last year.
The plant does not merely assemble cars. The Presidency records that Volkswagen Group Africa employs about 3 600 people, supports 1 440 suppliers and underpins roughly 50 000 indirect jobs, with more than R13 billion invested in its South African facilities since 2010 and more than R800 million in corporate social investment since 1994. For Kariega and the wider Eastern Cape, those figures are families, pay slips, transport routes and decades of industrial identity.
The President’s message: investment is earned
President Ramaphosa’s keynote gave the evening its political weight. He welcomed Volkswagen’s R4 billion investment in a new model for South Africa as a vote of confidence in the country’s industrial capability and its workforce, and he was candid that such confidence has to be earned again and again.
The President
“We do not take this investment for granted. In an intensely competitive environment, South Africa must keep proving that it has the capabilities, the skills and the regulatory environment required to attract this capital.”
The new model is the Volkswagen Tengo, unveiled at the gala to be assembled at Kariega alongside the Polo and Polo Vivo. The President went further than celebration: he announced that government is reviewing South Africa’s Automotive Master Plan so that industrial policy keeps pace with the global shift to electric, hybrid and new-energy vehicles.
“We are determined to ensure that South Africa remains a key global manufacturing base,” he said. “We must not only assemble the vehicles of the future, but also manufacture the components, process the materials and develop the technologies they require,” he added, pointing to the country’s reserves of the critical minerals on which transport electrification depends.
The stakes are national. The automotive industry contributes more than five percent of South Africa’s gross domestic product, sustains more than 115 000 direct manufacturing jobs and ships vehicles and components to 155 international destinations. That is the system the evening in Kariega was defending.
Transformation is part of the deal
The South African investment model that the ANC defends is not open access without obligation. It is a model built on local benefit, skills transfer, job creation and compliance with national laws and development priorities. Volkswagen’s history shows the model working in practice, the same way disciplined governance in Tshwane shows it in municipal water and finance, and not only recently: at the height of apartheid, the company was the first in its sector to recognise black trade unions and to place black artisans on its production lines.
That continuity matters to the ANC’s argument. South Africa is not asking investors to choose between investment and regulation. It is asking them to accept that a serious economy must grow in ways that create jobs, build skills and widen ownership and opportunity. A company that put down roots here in 1951, expanded through 1994 and is still investing in 2026 is proof that transformation and investment are not opposites but partners.
The contrast with investors who resist transformation requirements is left unnamed at a gala dinner, but it is the argument underneath the night: lasting investment does not arrive by accident. It stays where the rules are clear, the industrial base is workable and the country is serious about development.
Mayor Lobishe brings it home
Executive Mayor Babalwa Lobishe used her welcome address to anchor the national moment in local reality. She described Volkswagen as an economic anchor and industrial engine for Nelson Mandela Bay: the largest employer in the municipality, a company that has sustained generations of families and that carries suppliers and service businesses across the value chain.
For the municipality, she made clear, Volkswagen is not simply a multinational brand. It is part of the city’s economic spine, and the metro is committed to protecting the infrastructure the plant depends on, from roads and services to logistics and stability, while deepening the company’s community empowerment work, the same accountability-minded local government record this publication tracked when the city tabled its response to the R23 billion UIFWE finding.
That commitment carries the same message the President delivered from the other end of the structure: investor confidence is protected at every level of the state, national and local, and the institutions of government treat the preservation of that confidence as work, not ceremony.
Why investors stay
The evening operated as a case study in what sustained investment looks like when policy, industry and community interests align. Martina Biene traced the company’s South African story from the first Beetle in 1951, recalling that Volkswagen chose this country for its first factory outside Europe and that the decision shaped the identity the group still carries.
The answer to why capital stays is visible in those numbers: clear rules, transformation honoured over generations, an industrial ecosystem that works, skills that deepen with time and a market relationship that keeps its promises. It is the same logic that has made Kariega the single home of the Polo for 38 export markets, and it is the case the ANC government is making for the country as a whole.
Martina Biene
Building Volkswagen’s first factory outside Germany in South Africa became part of the identity the company has carried for generations.
From Beetle to Tengo
The anniversary was not only retrospective. Volkswagen used the night to unveil the Tengo, its next model for the Kariega line, and the Presidency framed the celebration around the state of the local automotive industry: competitiveness, policy requirements and the future of manufacturing, including the transition towards electric and hybrid mobility.
The message from the President is that assembly is the beginning, not the ceiling. The next phase of South African industrial policy must reach deeper: building capability to produce components, process materials and develop mobility technologies in the country, so that when the global fleet changes, the jobs that follow it are still South African jobs.
The meaning of the night
By the end of the evening, the symbolism was complete. The Kariega plant was not simply a venue for a dinner; it was the argument itself. A factory built before democracy, expanded through it, and crowned this week with a new model and a new commitment stands as evidence that the country’s developmental model can produce the conditions serious investors need.
Volkswagen’s 75 years show what happens when those conditions hold: companies stay, communities benefit and industry becomes part of the national story rather than a passing chapter. That is the capacity South Africa still has, and the standard the ANC carries into every conversation about the country’s economic future.
Keep reading the record
The Kariega story joins the wider account of what the movement is building in government: clean water in Tshwane, accountability in Nelson Mandela Bay, and industry that puts down roots.
Sources and further reading
This report draws on the Presidency’s advisory for the gala dinner, the EFE wire report carried by Infobae, and Volkswagen’s official history of the South African operation.