“Don’t Like She System” - Those were the words of my builder friend, Mr Mofokeng, back in my farming days. He never did quite get the difference between s/he.

Hon. Min.

A lot of commentators, mostly bizfolk, praise our current transport minister for ‘fixing Transnet Freight Rail’. She hasn’t, yet, but I am not going to bore with numbers. Just ask: Are the coal ports meeting targets?

The last time railways ran well was under a transport minister who, for a while, had been a steam locomotive stoker. Ben Schoeman was even tipped to become Prime Minister of South Africa, but withdrew. BJ Vorster got there instead. En kyk hoe lyk hulle nou. That is the last time anything good happened for rail systems in SA.

The Schoeman Ministry

It was not only that Schoeman was a systems man, although he was, but more about how difficult it is to pull the wool over anyone who has actually shovelled coal on steam. Stokers learned daily that drivers were the most inveterate schemers, second only to airline pilots, and just getting into that mindset is key to the entire South African genre of verneukery.

Was Oom Ben a leader? He was no silken tongued schmoozer. He was a well regarded, effective administrator and manager. Rail, air and ports were the pride of the country under his tenure. Neither zealout nor ideologue, and unafraid to disagree with HF Verwoerd, he walked away in disgust from BJ Vorster’s underhanded securocrat campaign against him. An adversary of Smuts, in hindsight, he was actually the last of the decent, Smuts-style ministers. Both cabinet and transport have gone downhill since he stepped away. None of that generation were much fun, but they could run a country!

The current minister has a reputation as a hard worker, and given that she inherited a sorry mess, a mess that has worsened for 60 years perhaps it is unfair to knock her. Bizfolk and media think she is “fixing Transnet”, but the numbers speak louder. After abdicating eleven routes to public-private partnerships, what is there to fix? Hardly any trains, down from a continuous, 30 to 50 goods trains running daily in 7 main lines in the fifties, in the Post Office era, none run by or with computers. No passenger mainline trains, down from daily trains serving every main city in SA. We just gave them up and walked away. Are we alright?

Sishen-Saldanha works fine. Nothing to fix there. That leaves coal routes and ports, pitifully little to do, and still they want to hand ports over to foreigners. You don’t learn to run a port by getting someone else to do it. What The Actual Fuss? The whole of Transnet Freight rail is down to three corridors, three ports and two commodities, and they can’t even do that.

What are they doing?