Inside Hisense Atlantis
Atlantis, a town roughly 50 kilometres north of Cape Town saw the collapse of its industry in 2010. Its unemployment rate surpassed 50%and its name became shorthand for gang activity and the local drug trade. Walking through the Hisense factory floor, none of that history is visible. What is visible is a working plant: television lines humming, refrigerator shells moving down conveyor belts, and rows of employees, young and old, men and women doing precise, repetitive, skilled work. It is easy to forget, standing in that noise, that this facility is also a case study in how a single industrial investment can reshape a town's economic fortunes.