LETTER: Sovereignty and SA ports

One can sympathise with the DA’s conviction that privatising the ports to re-establish functionality and efficiency is essential ( “Why it’s time to privatise the Port of Cape Town”, March 13).

However, the war has cast a new light on such proposals. When Germany closed its nuclear power stations in the name of global wellbeing the question of what that means for national sovereignty was wholly overlooked. Today, Germany is substantially dependent on Russia for its energy.  

Likewise, selling the ports to, say, a Chinese or Russian consortium of investors would have consequences far wider than the usual platitudes offered by an economic perspective — efficiency, economic-growth or boosting GNP.

Selling such strategic geographic interchanges must firstly be a political question.  Indeed, the war reminds us that space, or “territory”, still matters. The courage and determination shown by ordinary Ukrainians to fight for “their country” is drawn from precisely this emotion, not from some ideal of global justice or economic prosperity.

Those who have forgotten this link-to-place most deeply are the global economic elite, enjoying as they do “borderless” and seamless world travel. Paperless migrants have not: daily they remember where home is. Only loyalty-to-place produces national sovereignty.

Jens Kuhn, Cape Town

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