The recent National Rail Policy Green Paper public launch by Minister of Transport Dipuo Peters is a radical step in the right direction. This gesture by the government upholds the values of our constitution and the Freedom Charter in that the people shall govern.
Public participation remains critical in the entrenchment of democratic values, the implementation of public policy and the development of our country.
This paper, when finally implemented, must finally eradicate the yoke of colonialism and the apartheid remnants still visible here. The national rail policy should finally afford us an opportunity to plan and implement rail transport systems in rural, peri-urban and urban areas.
Gone are the days when rail transport was the preserve of urban areas. It is well documented that the colonial and apartheid government used rail transport to export gold, iron ore, chrome, diamonds and other precious minerals to their fatherland and built some European countries.
Disinvestment no mistake
Hostels were created on the periphery of black townships to house millions of men under deplorable conditions. Most of those men residing in hostels were transported by rail and exploited in the major economic centres of Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town.
It was, therefore, not a mistake that the apartheid government decided to disinvest in rail transport in the early 1980s. A major political decision was carefully crafted with the hope that, when the ANC assumed its place at the head of the country, it would find a state that was in disarray and malfunctioning. The De Villiers reports on transport services of 1986 resonate with this view and illustrate that it was not random that the road transport industry was deregulated to cater for traditional rail commodities like flammable liquids, and heavy and bulk cargoes. Road freight monopoly companies were further created and funded by the apartheid government to grow and sustain a new industry.
Today in 2015, our road network is heavily infested with dangerous goods that are transported on our roads because our rail transport system is old and inefficient. The reduction and ultimate removal of transportation of traditional rail cargo from our roads network back to rail has become more than urgent.
For our economy to grow at a faster rate, we would need to remove the current market share of more than 80 percent of rail cargo from roads back to rail. The 2014 Polokwane road accident in which a truck carrying flammable liquids burnt its drivers and passengers without a trace is a case in point. The Pinetown truck accident in which innocent motorists and working people were killed is just but one of the examples of the modern impact of the apartheid government’s decisions on rail transport.
The loss of lives of more than 14 000 every year through road fatalities is a major concern. Surely we would not lose so many innocent souls if we had a well-functioning rail transport system. In fact, we would also drastically reduce the unabated road fatalities that we continue to experience on our roads. For instance, as the Road Traffic Management Corporation notes in its media release of September 12, 2015, from April to August 2015, 5 433 lives have been lost through thousands of road crashes.
South Africa needs a practical blueprint and a visionary framework in the rail industry and society at large. The envisaged national rail policy offers an opportunity to redefine the role of rail transportation and its contribution in the socioeconomic landscape in the country.
Our people, especially the downtrodden and poor masses, should benefit. After 21 years of democratic rule we must witness the introduction of high-speed rail systems to ferry pilgrims to Moria, and miners from places like Welkom and Lephalale safe and sound to their various homes in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and other parts of the country.
Long-distance rail systems like the Shosholoza Meyl belong in museums and the tourism industry. South Africa should move with world trends and implement high-speed rail systems for long-distance journeys.
The policy should undoubtedly complement the interventions and megaprojects driven by the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa), Transnet and other state utilities. Through this policy we must see the South African working population and the ordinary people access socioeconomic opportunities.
The policy should mean they spend less money and time travelling to and from work. Rapidly developing towns like Rustenburg, Thohoyandou and Lephalale, rural dwellings like deep Sekhukhuneland, Cala and Jozini, and new urban settlements like Diepsloot, Cosmo City and Thekwane should benefit from this intervention. We need metro trains at the same or at a higher standard than the ones launched in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, last week in these new urban areas.
The policy proposal should revitalise the economic rail networks – rail branch lines. The rail branch lines were used as employment centres for poor whites during apartheid. The ANC government must revitalise these lines and reconstruct them to serve the whole country in the creation of new job opportunities, as well as new economic centres.
Policy conundrum
The ANC’s Umrabulo National General Council (NGC) discussion document of 2015 rightfully articulates that “a more urgent process to map out the plan of revitalisation of branch lines by Transnet and/or through some competitive concessioning process is needed”. This is long overdue and will complement the initiative to create black industrialists.
On the flip side, it will be interesting to see how the ANC NGC emerges from the inherent policy conundrum of Transnet’s profit-based approach and the state development posture. The other challenge for the proposed national rail policy is in implementation. Like any developing country, the policy would need financial and human resources, project management capacity and buy-in across all policy actors in the country. The biggest test, however, is whether there would be buy-in from the private sector and potential investors.
The private sector is notorious for being unpatriotic and anti-competitive. Recent issues like the 2010 road construction price collusion, broad-based black economic empowerment fronting and investments beyond South Africa’s borders are some examples. Perhaps we can be optimistic that, as the world tries to recover from the 2008 recession, the private sector does, to some extent, need the government to provide public infrastructure and an efficient rail system is of paramount importance.
I suppose it is now an opportune time for the private sector to play a significant role in transforming and developing the country in the same way apartheid was sustained and supported by the private sector at the time.
* Sipho Dibakwane is the founder and chairman of the Impumelelo Educational Trust. (www.impumelelotrust.co.za)
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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