Cyril Ramaphosa finally addressing the country’s logistics problems

It is heartening to see President Cyril Ramaphosa finally addressing the country’s logistics problems, at least a positive step amid general economic gloom.

The President not only initiated discussions with Transnet executives and board members, he despatched Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan to China on a mission no doubt related to missing or malfunctioning locomotives.  He reportedly also held a virtual meeting with key executives from the country’s main exporting sectors, notably the mining, automotive, and agriculture.

Ramaphosa’s intervention is obviously welcome, but one can’t help wondering why it came so late. The aforementioned sectors represent the lifeblood of our economy; without an efficient rail and port system to get our exports to market we will never realise our growth targets, let alone stem a potential jobs bloodbath.  

Here in the Western Cape we face our own unique challenges, with a Port besieged by the notorious ‘Cape Doctor’ which wreaks havoc with the operational capacity of the Container Terminal.  We have our own unique road and rail freight challenges, too.

Albeit belated, the President’s aforementioned ‘skrik wakker’ intervention illustrates the rationale behind the Cape Chamber’s recent management reconfiguration. Active and broad-based collaboration between the public and private sectors is in our opinion the best way forward in terms of resolving ongoing economic challenges such as crime, load shedding and logistics bottlenecks. We don’t need to wait for the pylons to fall down – as several did at the weekend outside Pretoria, reportedly due to metal theft – to act, and to act decisively. We have broadened our management structure by incorporating various sector organisations into our steering committees. In this way we are unifying the voice of business to better engage our public sector counterparts. We want a place at the table to speed up much-needed economic reforms, such as those discussed last week relating to the logistics sector. There are several other sectors that require similar attention. And rather than hint at reforms, we want to ensure Cabinet actually goes the distance and turns words into action.

What a relief it would be to one day read about pylons going up, not crashing down.