This year marks the 150th anniversary of rail in South Africa (SA). It started, humbly enough, on a short track in Durban in 1851. Fifty years later, at the time of the formation of the union of South Africa, a relatively extensive strategic railway system had already developed. With union, the railways were established as an official organ of the new unitary state and a political agenda was set that largely focused on servicing the mining and agricultural sectors.
For the better part of six-and-a-half decades after 1910, the rail sector was carefully nurtured and handsomely resourced by successive administrations. Growing competition from road was kept at bay by tough regulatory practices that ensured rail freight of a virtual monopoly.
From the mid-1970s, however, rail’s pre-eminent position in SA began to come under scrutiny. A series of national transport policy studies reviewed trends in transport deregulation around the world. The findings reinforced a growing belief that an over-protected rail industry and an over-regulated road freight sector were detrimental to the overall South African economy. This was undoubtedly true - but as often happens in these matters, in following decades, and indeed, right up to the recent present, the stick was then bent excessively in the opposite direction.
In 1977, for instance, the Road Transport Act increased the maximum permissible net payload for road trucks to 22 tons – this exceeded the 20 tons carrying capacity of the ES-type rail wagon widely in use at the time. Subsequent amendments have increased permissible road payloads to between 42 and 45 tons.
Total deregulation of road transport was implemented with the promulgation of the Transport Deregulation Act in 1988.
In theory, this deregulation of road freight was meant to be counter-balanced by a new set of road regulations. A road transport quality system was formulated and enacted with the Road Traffic Act (1989). Specific guidelines were given to regulate road transport operations and to guide law enforcement on issues such as vehicle and driver fitness, driver hours behind the wheel, speed, etc. The implementation of these measures was, however, done very haphasardly and never regarded as a priority by the majority of provincial and local traffic authorities.
All of this resulted in rail’s rapid loss of market share to road. Already, by 1986, about 21 000 wagons (12% of the total fleet) were idle, and about 60% of the rail network was being used at less than half of its practical capacity.
Source: Department of Transport
