A bad week for Transnet CEO Portia Derby

A good week

There are no Russian heroes on the battlefield in Ukraine, but there are a few in the motherland. The most visible has been Marina Ovsyannikova, an editor at Russia’s Channel One who took her protest against Vladimir Putin’s war to live TV. The placard she held up on air read: "Stop the war. Don’t believe propaganda. They’re lying to you." She said she was "deeply ashamed" to have helped make "Kremlin propaganda". With Putin banning real news and threatening those opposed to the war with jail sentences, Ovsyannikova may have been facing only TV cameras rather than guns, but her act was one of the bravest.

A bad week

To hear Transnet CEO Portia Derby tell it, the rail and ports operator’s performance has been simply "suboptimal" of late, but it’s still razor sharp on its delivery focus. Now, speak to just about any major mining or materials company in SA — the latest of which might be Thungela Resources — and you’ll get the true, unvarnished picture of an unfolding economic catastrophe. That is, a rail operator apparently standing by as its network is stripped by thieves, while its inefficient and creaking ports fall further and further behind. Suboptimal is not the word. Disastrous is.