9 June 2003
Acting Minister of Transport, cde Jeff Radebe,
Comrade Dullah Omar, I am sure that I speak on behalf of the entire Portfolio Committee in expressing our pleasure at your presence in the House this afternoon. We trust that it is a sign that you are indeed making a steady recovery.
Colleagues,
This budget debate occurs in the immediate aftermath of the Growth and Development Summit. I believe the resolutions and vision emanating from the Summit speak to many key strategic tasks for the transport sector. This debate also comes towards the end of the second five-year term of our new democratic dispensation. It is therefore appropriate to begin to do a broad stock-taking. What are the lessons we have learned these past 9 years? What are the key challenges going forward?
The transport sector graphically illustrates President Mbeki's State of Nation perspective that we have in South Africa a "dual economy and society". A single economy and society marked by sharply divided but interacting, perhaps even mutually reinforcing, polarities.
On the one hand, we have a modern transport system that is central to our formal economy - a logistics system that includes our commercial airports, our rail and road freight systems, our ports, and the many support institutions and agencies, some of which fall under this Transport budget - the Air Traffic Navigation Services Company, the Civil Aviation Authority, the South African Maritime Safety Authority, the Cross-Border Transport Agency.
This logistics system is not just South African, it reaches actively into our region, our continent and links us into a global economy.
There are many complex challenges that face us on this front. Many of the challenges relate very directly to the exponential growth of the global economy over the last two decades, and the remarkable successes in expanding our own trade in the last nine years, not least in key sectors like auto manufacturing and in tourism.
It is well known that our very successes have created serious pressure points in parts of the logistics chain. Currently most in the news are our sea port container terminals, and especially our largest and busiest, Durban Container Terminal.
Working closely with our colleagues in the Trade and Industry and Public Enterprises Portfolio Committees, we have held a series of hearings and other engagements with port users and operators to better understand the challenges. At the moment we are busy with the National Ports Authority Bill, and we hope to shape this legislation so that it provides an effective legal and regulatory framework and greater certainty for all stake-holders as we proceed with the modernisation, upgrading and general development of our ports.
More broadly, on the general national logistics front, the ANC transport study group believes that what is needed, more than ever, is greater strategic coherence, more effective national (and indeed regional) harmonisation. ACSA has led a major airport terminal construction and refurbishing programme. It is with a sense of pride that we congratulate them for this impressive programme.
But, stepping back a little, and without for a moment blaming ACSA, is it out of order to wonder whether a massive new domestic terminal in Johannesburg is a more pressing priority than, say, capital investment in our container terminals? How does the proposed King Shaka/Dube international logistic hub square with the recent upgrade of Durban International Airport?
I don't pretend to have easy answers to these and many similar strategic questions, but I would like to see the National Department of Transport lead a pro-active process of stimulating, in government, across all spheres of government, and in the public in general, an open, frank discussion about the key logistic challenges, and how we marshal our resources most effectively.
The success of Saturday's Growth and Development Summit rested, in part, on a number of sector summits that preceded it. Other sector summits are soon to follow. As the ANC we would like to see the NDoT (along with other key government departments) actively explore the possibility of a logistics summit in the coming year, a summit involving government, labour and key private sector stake-holders, so that we begin to develop a shared national logistics vision.
The other pole of transport, the other duality is most in evidence in our mass public transport sector, most of which is characterised by what President Mbeki described as the crisis of underdevelopment.
We should not, of course, underestimate real successes achieved in the past few years. Perhaps the most notable has been the formalisation, legalisation and democratisation of the taxi industry. Minister Omar, you played the leading role in this key achievement, and we would like to acknowledge this. The key priority is now to proceed rapidly, but sensitively, with the implementation of the recapitalisation programme.
There are other major commuter transport challenges, including the elimination of crime on our commuter rail system, and ensuring that our subsidies really benefit the most impoverished communities.
But here, too, it is important to step back just a little. Without wishing to side-step immediate problems and responsibilities, it is important to understand that many of the challenges in mass public transport relate not to incidental matters, but to systemic problems.
Our commuter trains, our taxis and buses are mostly operating the same long, one-way in the morning, the other way back in the evening, commutes between what remain distant dormitory townships on the one hand, and work and shopping on the other. We have to do what we can to make these commutes safer, more reliable and pleasant, and affordable - but often it is, basically, like trying to climb up an escalator that is coming down, trying to make socially dysfunctional corridors created by apartheid geography work as best we can.
Paradoxically, many of the achievements of the last nine years - 1,4 million new low-cost houses, mostly in the same dormitory townships, for instance - have compounded our transport challenges.
The beginning of wisdom is to appreciate that many of our mass public transport challenges cannot be solved simply within a transport silo. We need to campaign actively for a paradigm shift in regard to human settlement patterns. We need to support the Minister of Housing's call for a greater densification of our towns and cities. We need to construct more sustainable communities, that have a greater multi-income character. We need to move low-cost housing closer to work and shopping, and work and shopping closer to townships.
94% of the NDoT's budget flows straight out of the department as transfer payments. Rather than lament this reality, we should see it as an opportunity to transfer, not just cash, but a paradigm shift in the provincial and local government spheres. We urge the NDoT to gear up to play a pro-active role in helping municipalities, for instance, to link IDPs much more dynamically to transport planning and transport subsidies.
The two poles of which we have been speaking are poles within the same economy and society. The straddle crane operator at the Durban Container Terminal is operated by a worker who has to commute in from a dormitory township often on unsafe, unreliable public transport, with all of the obvious implications for productivity.
The two poles come together in the sharing of infrastructure, not least on our roads. Other ANC speakers will emphasise the important challenges relating to road safety and enforcement, and in particular we are calling for the Road Traffic Management Corporation to be up and running as soon as possible.
Other ANC speakers will also highlight the many positive resolutions from the GDS that relate to road and related infrastructure construction and maintenance. We urge the NDoT and the SA National Road Agency to play a proselytising role in the establishment of extended public works programmes and the fostering of greater labour absorption in the road and port construction industries.
I would like to acknowledge the helpful and diligent support we have received from the Acting DG and his staff, confronting, I think, an often testing situation. I would also like to commend Minister Jeff Radebe for stepping in to assist with this department in addition to his other extensive responsibilities.
The ANC supports the budget vote.