The ANC government inherited SA Railways & Harbours, a railroad operation and infrastructure second to none on the continent. Having taken over, incompetent and lackadaisical cadres were deployed to manage this gigantic national asset.
It soon became clear that those deployed had no idea or meaning of the word maintenance. They fragmented the entity into meaningless companies called things like “Shosholoza Meyl”, Metrorail and others. Then the rapacious plunder and pillaging by comrades commenced with breathtaking rapidity.
The Trans-Karoo and Trans-Natal express trains, three-star hotels on wheels, are no more. Rail tracks and station facilities have been destroyed. Shacks are on Transnet property everywhere. There is no control whatsoever. Total paralysis has set in.
The president and his loquacious transport minister suffer serious amnesia. I could not believe it when President Cyril Ramaphosa told the nation “government does not create jobs”. SA Railways & Harbours was created by a Nationalist government to address the enormous unemployment and poverty that afflicted poor whites as a result of English oppression. Tens of thousands of jobs were created, ironically not only for whites, with full employee benefits including grocery rations.
Therein lies the solution to extricating Transnet from the sordid mess it is in now.
Laurel Angoma
Sandton
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