The following speech was delivered in Parliament today by the DA’s Shadow Minister of Transport, Manny de Freitas MP, during the Budget Vote on Transport.
Chairperson
As I said in last year’s debate, the Democratic Alliance is, and has always been supportive of any initiative that will get South Africa moving – literally and figuratively. Indeed, it is the transport sector that can, in real terms, negate Apartheid’s spatial planning as it can bring people closer to their places of work.
However, there are currently a number of factors that are standing in the way of successful transport solutions for South Africa. The first of these is e-tolls:
It appears that the South African National Roads Agency Limited (SANRAL) continues to keep its head in the sand. This month, civil society organization, the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA), has instituted a round of legal challenges against SANRAL. OUTA believes that the Gauteng e-tolls scheme was introduced unlawfully, as they don’t comply with public information and consultation requirements in the SANRAL Act and the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act (PAJA).
The e-toll issue alone has turned an otherwise efficient and effective State Owned Entity into one that is suffering economically. SANRAL needs to start facing this issue head-on and listen to the people of Gauteng. The entire e-tolls scheme needs to either be scrapped or be funded differently so that the financial burden is not left with the already overstretched taxpayer.
The second factor is one that I mentioned in last year’s debate. There is a bad soap opera in town and it just won’t go away! In case you’re not sure what I’m talking about, it’s called “PRASA”. Just like previous seasons, the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) continues to deliver corruption whilst millions of South Africans are left to suffer by having to use outdated and mal-maintained trains daily.
In a cliff-hanger episode in 2015, the Public Protector dramatically revealed her, until then, much anticipated report called “Derailed”. This over 390-page report revealed details of a total failure of delivery and governance at PRASA. The Auditor General’s report also confirmed wide-spread corruption within PRASA.
The soap opera reveals how 370 contracts, all with the value of over R10 million each, are being investigated by duly appointed contractors with 56 suspicious transactions under the value of R10 million being investigated by National Treasury.
Our soapy reveals that, in the end, PRASA has paid nearly R2.65 billion to date for trains that cannot run on the South African rail network. Claims have been made of substantial payments worth millions made to ANC fundraisers who claim to be friends of the President. Makes you think, doesn’t it!
More crooked deals are revealed in this story. The Siyangena signalling tender to the value of R3.1 billion was irregularly awarded. To add insult to injury, the quality of work is so poor that these signalling systems present potential derailments.
We also see several questionable relationships that exist between Siyangena’s shareholders and key political figures. In the press, it was reported that Siyangena had purportedly paid more than R500 million to an obscure company called Hailway Trading (Pty) Ltd. The Director of this company is a known associate and benefactor of President Zuma.
The soap opera started taking bizarre proportions when the then Transport Minister, Dipuo Peters, seconded to PRASA the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) in her department, Mr Collins Letsoalo, to act as the Group Chief Executive Officer (CEO) while a permanent replacement is being sought. As soon as he was appointed, Mr Letsoalo awarded himself a 350% salary increase without Board approval and instructed officials in the Ministry to charge PRASA for it.
The delays in the permanent appointment of a CEO and relevant executives, the lack of progress from law enforcement on the criminal investigations and prosecutions as well as indifference from the Minister on critical matters have had a deleterious effect on PRASA operations and governance.
It became crystal clear to me that there is a cover up here when my colleague and I saw for ourselves it playing out before our very eyes.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, the 7th and 8th of March, the PRASA Board reported to the Portfolio Committee. At the end of the second day of hearings, the Committee unanimously agreed that it will undertake an investigation into all that is taking place within PRASA. This was reconfirmed at that same meeting after the Minister announced, via a cowardly written statement, that the Board had been fired. In fact, it was the members of the ANC that were the most vocal and vociferous in demanding that we institute an investigation.
Well, complete with melodramatic violin accompaniment , imagine my dismay and total shock when only two days later, on Friday that week, the 8th of March, the members of the ANC had a complete opposite stance to what they had had only 48 hours earlier. Suddenly no investigation was necessary! Makes you think, doesn’t it!
Obviously, they had been told to toe the line and to assist in a cover-up that involves many people all the way up to and including Number One! Let me repeat what I said at that meeting: I will continue to dig, probe and investigate this issue. All that this cover-up has done is to make me more determined than ever before.
This Board’s term of office is scheduled to end on 31 July 2017. Just like Minister Joe Maswanganyi was appointed because he is willing to do his master’s bidding, I predict that a new, more compliant Board will be installed that will assist in this cover-up. South Africans will then get to witness the next cliff-hanger episode of a cover-up in this ongoing soap opera.
Lastly, if there is one key performance indicator that demonstrates a Transport Minister’s performance or non-performance, then it’s road safety statistics.
Thousands continue to die every month yet the same strategies that do not yield positive results continue to be used year in and year out.
A recent report tabled by the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) at a Portfolio Committee meeting confirm findings of other studies that the main reasons for road deaths are tyre and brake issues. Yet our road safety campaign doesn’t speak to these concerns at all. Instead, the same strategy of checking vehicle and drivers licenses continues, yet different results are expected.
In fact, if one looks at the RTMC’s own road safety statistics, one sees that the best road safety year statistically was 2000 with less than 8500 fatalities. This is considering that there were less resources and money thrown at this problem at the time. It is also when the focus changed from road safety to revenue generation. The RTMC and the Department prefer to focus on making money out of the issue instead of saving lives.
In addition, the Minister embarrasses himself by making statements such as saying that we do not require visible traffic policing because “we are not a police state”, when international practice unambiguously demonstrates that visible traffic policing does reduce road deaths.
Minister, we are supportive of you fulfilling your mandate and are here to assist in whatever way possible. However, unlike your predecessor, you need to do the right thing and you actually need to be present and demonstrate leadership by addressing the numerous transport issues that we face today, not by covering them up.