Department of Transport	moving south africa
	FOREWORD

 

1. Foreword

Letter From The Minister

Fellow South Africans,

It is with a great deal of pride that we offer the report, Moving South Africa: A Transport Strategy for 2020, to the South African public. This constitutes the proposal of my department for the transport strategy for the country over the next 20 years.

It is the culmination of a process which began when the first democratic government was elected in 1994, through a series of Green Papers and White Papers, and extensive consultation with stakeholders at each step in the process.

When I was appointed Minister of Transport, I – like my colleagues in the Cabinet, Provincial, and Local government – confronted an inheritance which was that spawned of an old order, which worked to the advantage of the previously privileged and powerful. This old order excluded vast sections of the population from basic services and was driven by a logic of spatial separation and dispersion, and depended for its survival on continuing support from an overburdened fiscus. In the current context, the entire system is not sustainable over the long run.

We in the National Department of Transport were confronted with the task of redesigning our distorted inheritance to meet a new set of national goals – goals based on the democratic principle of meeting basic needs of all citizens, supporting industrial growth, serving the rural impoverished, harnessing the economic potential of our region, and facilitating job creation and growth of SMMEs.

We articulated our needs, objectives, and priorities in the Transport White Paper of 1997 after a lengthy consultative process which involved not only the transport industry itself, but also the customers of the system as well. We knew what we wanted to do, but the question we faced was how. How were we to simultaneously meet basic needs, develop a sustainable transport industry, serve the needs of freight customers and urban commuters, rural passengers and international visitors, domestic tourists and long-distance passengers, all within the constraints of a tight fiscal discipline – and based on a system designed often for a very different purpose?

We set up the MSA project with that mandate. I am proud, after 14 months of detailed analysis and widespread consultation, to offer this report as our answer to the question. I have insisted from the beginning that our process and our conclusions be data-driven, and be based on in-depth analysis of the facts, and I trust that you will agree that we have kept to that promise. From these facts we have developed the strategy, and this report is proposed as our strategic framework for the next twenty years. It provides our answer to how we will meet the needs of the nation and the needs of our transport users.

It became clear early on in the strategy development process that tough choices were needed: in a country with limited resources (in terms of skills and capital) and many diverse needs, we had to ensure that all investments – whether from the private or public sectors – would be of maximum benefit to transport users, and sustainable into the future. We could not serve everyone’s needs to the same level, and so were compelled to proritise which needs to serve. As I wrote in my foreword to the White Paper, "In the final analysis government has to make its own decisions bearing in mind what serves the national interest".

We were not, and are not, responding to a crisis in the transportation system. In general, the system is working. But if we look out ten years it becomes apparent that there will be a crisis. The quality of our roads is declining and there is insufficient capital available to maintain and upgrade them. Where operations are currently breaking even, they will not do so much longer. Where our export costs are competitive now, they will rise as our trade flows begin to balance. By 2020, 3 million people will not be able to afford any transport at all.

Our strategy is to invest time, effort and resources now to ensure we do not face a crisis in the future. And, if we act swiftly and efficiently, we can build and reinforce the capacity of the industry itself to make the investments necessary to continuously improve the services we offer to our passengers and goods.

We are under no illusion that the challenges are daunting and that to implement the recommendations of MSA requires determined, coordinated action from the government. It will also require similar levels of courage and actions from the parastatals and private sector firms, from labour and others. We recognise that the transition from old to new will be painful for us all, but the vision contained in this document – to which all stakeholders have contributed – should inspire us to continue moving toward our goals.

We in the DoT invite you, from wherever you are, whether a beneficiary of the strategy or implementor of it, to discuss the strategy with us. Our door is always open. But before you come in, consider the one question we will always ask: what can you do to help us overcome the obstacles to its implementation?

For our part, this report represents the first act in removing those obstacles. We have just begun. We shall deliver.

 

Mac Maharaj

Minister of Transport

 

<- Previous Section	CONTENTS	Next Section ->
preface	back to MSA page	( 2. executive summary )