Barbara Creecy, South Africa’s new Minister of Transport, has a tough portfolio to manage. The nation’s transport sector suffers serious shortcomings in terms of safety, efficiency, political stability and sustainability, contributing in sum to a recessive socio-economic trajectory. In her speech given at the 42nd Southern African Transport Conference on 8 July 2024, Creecy defined the immediate and long-term imperatives facing SA’s transport sector.
“The South African transport sector is not working as it should but the new South African government is committed to addressing the nation’s many serious transport challenges over the next five years,” she stated at the conference, themed ‘Upskilling and Reskilling the Transport Industry for Current and Future Challenges’.
“This sector is not operating as either an effective economic facilitator or as a proper social service,” said Creecy. “The condition of our roads, logistical and capacity issues affecting our freight network and road safety are just a few of the problems that have plagued the sector in recent times.”
Creecy noted that when the country’s transport systems suffer, economic growth drops, foreign investment declines and working people find it difficult to get to their jobs safely, affordably and on time.
“Our roads and rail networks are arteries of our nation and should move people and goods safely, speedily and affordably across the length and breadth of our country and facilitate our connectivity with Africa and the broader world,” said Creecy.
She added that there has been recent progress towards addressing national transport challenges via the establishment in 2023 of the National Logistics Crisis Committee (NLCC), chaired by South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, as well as the adoption by cabinet of the Freight Logistics Roadmap.
“The workstreams of the Logistics Crisis Committee have been set up with personnel from key ministries, including the Department of Transport. The committee is working to ensure stability across the various supply chain and logistics sectors.
“Areas of focus include key logistics corridors handling commodities that are essential to the export market and economic growth, such as coal and iron ore. These efforts address backlogs and congestion at strategic border crossings such as Komatipoort and Beitbridge, combatting congestion in key national highway corridors such as the N1 and N3, as well as interventions to combat cable theft and maintenance backlogs at Transnet.
“The NLCC is a young structure and it is also being employed as a means to encourage more private sector collaboration and participation with Government as we address the many challenges South Africa is facing in the area of logistics,” Creecy stated.
Another transport priority identified by Creecy was road safety. “We cannot normalise a situation in which more than 12 000 people are killed on our roads every year,” she said. “Nor can our country continue to sustain the cost of more than 10 000 fatal crashes, which the Road Traffic Management Corporation estimates cost R186 billion or 3% of the South African GDP every year. We must ensure the country’s roads are safer for those who use them.”
She also undertook to work with the taxi sector, which carries an estimated 80% of all South Africans using public transport. “I pledge to ensure it takes its place in a safer, greener transport ecosystem,” she said. “We must work together to decrease levels of conflict and violence which pose a significant risk to the sector and to commuters.”
Enhancing skills for a new era of digitised transport
Acknowledging the skills-development theme of the conference, Creecy noted that recent innovations in digital technology and renewable energy have heralded one of the greatest changes in transport since the introduction of the automobile.
“In this next decade, transport will be revolutionised by an acceleration of digital technology and new inventions powered by renewable energy. Such innovations include operational automation and real-time tracking of shipments to assist in port management, digital signalling to modernise the management of our railway system, the use of artificial intelligence in traffic management and the introduction of self-drive vehicles and drones for delivery,” she said.
“It won’t be long before the use of these technologies is upscaled throughout our logistics supply chains. It means no time must be lost to upskill those already working in the industries so that they are not left behind as we transition to the widespread use of these new technologies.
“The transition to new energy vehicles (NEVs) is also accelerating rapidly across the globe. Sale of new petrol and diesel cars will be banned by 2035 in Europe. New York has also announced that sales of nearly all gas and diesel-powered cars and trucks in the state will be banned by 2035,” Creecy stated.
She went on the describe The Department of Transport’s Green Transport Strategy that aligns Government’s transport development objectives with its UN-guided climate change mitigation goals.
“The strategy includes investing in green energy infrastructure, promoting the uptake of alternative fuels such as biogas and green hydrogen, extending the rail network to provide alternative public transport and developing ‘green procurement guidelines’ which will promote low carbon technologies. Implementation of this strategy will be a priority for this next term of government in an era of hyper globalisation,” she added.
Creecy also shared a vision for the country to make the most of its location as a gateway to Africa, as well as its geopolitical relationships through BRICS and the African Continental Free Trade Agreement.
“New technologies and new global imperatives will fundamentally alter the skills required in the transport sector. But equally importantly, they will open up new industries, new opportunities and new forms of economic access, ownership and employment,” concluded Creecy.
Clearly, Minister Creecy has a defined mandate to bring South Africa’s transport sector up to speed with UN Sustainable Development Goals and global corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) principles. However, missing from her speech were several pressing issues that urgently need Government attention, including: road freight safety over-regulation, lack of enforcement of these laws, and disputes over foreign driver employment.
Hopefully, Minister Creecy will address these issues forthwith. But for now, a beam of light has been shed on the vision for SA transport’s foreseeable future. Clearly, local truck transport industry players need to ‘get ahead of the hyper-globalisation curve’ by: taking charge of upskilling the trucking talent pool; becoming early adopters of new fleet management tech; deploying green trucks, and operating from eco-wise premises with big-data reporting tools.
It is a ‘brave new world’ ahead of us. Let’s wish Minister Creecy the best of luck while all of us in SA trucking go hard at it!
