Heavy hearts in Dockland after Zuma’s performance in Parliament
THE president’s parliamentary performance last week was hardly presidential. He fobbed off most of the opposition’s probing questions, leaving taxpayers – and perhaps more crucially, investors – wondering where the country is heading. His obvious disdain for accountability amid his jarring laughter raised the political temperature to tinderbox levels.
For the shipping sector, that performance was yet another stumbling block to hopes of recovery in an industry that has the potential to create thousands of new jobs and to assure a sound future for those currently employed. However, there are heavy hearts in Dockland now.
Amid his demeaning giggles, Zuma did refer to Operation Phakisa, that initiative taken in 2015 to stimulate development of the shipping industry and to introduce concepts such as the “Blue Economy” and the “Tenth Province”.
While there is a tendency to attribute every positive maritime project to that initiative, the actual starting dates of several such projects stretch back to pre-Phakisa times. Transnet’s essential harbour tug building programme – initiated before Phakisa – is a case in point.
But what has happened to many laudable projects proposed during the Phakisa discussions?
Lethargy and lack of funds have meant the new salvage tugs are not near the drawing boards yet, and such is the lead-in time for the construction of specialised tugs that years will pass before a new, custom-built vessel goes down the ways.
It might be preferable to purchase tugs off the shelf as, with ill winds blowing in the offshore oil industry, several suitable tugs might be available on the secondhand market.
They will, however, lack the power, speed and essential training berths that were envisaged for the custom-built tugs, whose construction in a local yard would have brought much positive spin-off to the country.
Welcome strides are being taken to improve the country’s maritime electronic surveillance, but unless these new systems are supported by sophisticated aircraft and rescue helicopters on immediate standby, the project will be incomplete.
Media reports last week rekindled the sensible idea to expand Cape Town’s container terminal seawards towards Milnerton.
The growth in the size of container ships makes the expansion of this thriving terminal essential. Regular readers will recall that the same plan was quashed by the green lobby prior to the terminal’s upgrade that began in 2007.
At the time, I wrote that the present layout of the terminal is unsatisfactory, and that if a ship at Berth 604 is to load 500 reefer containers from the reefer stack at the Woodstock end of the terminal, the containers would be transported collectively over a distance that is equivalent to driving from Cape Town to Durban.
A Phakisa-inspired suggestion was to train hundreds of young people for sea-going careers so the country could become an international supplier of seafarers. Although numerous cadets have been trained, the training ship SA Agulhas has been laid up in East London since June, without cadets.
A promising development in 2015 was the much trumpeted flagging in South Africa of two Capesize ore carriers. The ships carried a few South African cadets, but several qualified South African officers are unemployed ashore, while foreign officers and crew continue aboard these vessels.
To leave these dark backwaters and to get back on course, the local shipping industry will require extensive intervention by energetic and experienced people, and by investors who are willing to become deeply involved in an operation to rescue the maritime sector.
Until our leaders display statesmanlike behaviour, unshakeable integrity and positive leadership, investors will turn elsewhere for returns on their money, and the dreams of Phakisa will fade like the morning mist.