Let’s hope ANC steers clear of second ‘Rubicon’ blow to shipping industry
CONSPICUOUS for her 300m black hull, the bulker Azul Victoria is at Landing Wall, where repairs are under way following the flooding of her engine room when she was well to the west of Cape Town.
Having arrived off the Cape a few days earlier, ALP Ippon, the Dutch-flagged tug with a 198-ton bollard pull, towed the bulker into port last Friday. For at least one company – and probably several sub-contractors – this important job partially relieves the ship-repair drought in Cape Town where, following the offshore oil industry collapse, a paucity of major projects has meant protracted lean times for local repairers.
I recall another fairly lengthy period of “drought” in the local shipping scene when cargo volumes were very low. The inflexible PW Botha had delivered his disastrous Rubicon speech in Durban in August 1985, decreeing that it would be apartheid business as usual, and Nelson Mandela would stay in jail.
Prior to that speech, there had been much anticipation – even excitement – that the entrenched government would soften its stance, but, pursuing his hardline approach, Botha missed a golden opportunity to advance democracy in South Africa.
That serious error of judgement had swift repercussions. The rand wobbled and the anti-apartheid lobby strengthened its voice, leading to increased trade sanctions against South Africa. Indicative of the slump in trade was the cargo manifest of SA Sederberg, northbound in September 1986. On the foredeck was perhaps a quarter of her deck container capacity, only 11 containers were on the vessel’s afterdeck, while down below were many empty container slots. On their southbound voyages, those container ships often carried even less cargo, and the local shipping industry entered very bleak weather.
Although they moved baseline cargoes of newsprint, sugar and Lever Brothers’ products from Durban to the Cape, the coasters also struggled as a significant slice of coastal feeder cargo dried up, and politics handicapped Unicorn Lines’ operations to east and west Africa.
Another serious indirect but long-term consequence of the downturn in the local shipping industry also occurred. Struggling with their own financial difficulties as their industry declined, shipping folks simply could not afford to run the Merchant Navy training academy, General Botha, at Granger Bay. General Botha cadets, they reasoned, might struggle to gain employment at sea.
The academy’s board handed over the prime property – one of the best-equipped merchant naval training centres anywhere – to the Cape Peninsula Technikon, now Cape Peninsula University of Technology. Its traditions, stretching back more than six decades, stopped abruptly, and the gradual departure of experienced personnel has taken its toll.
Fast-forward to 2017. Within a week, the ANC will take a vital step – equal in importance to that illfated Rubicon speech – in choosing its next leader and, by extension, the next South African president. Sadly, the party’s penchant for choosing the wrong person (remember the Polokwane rabble-rousing that put JZ in power?) could manifest again, and, carrying all manner of adverse political baggage, the uninspiring Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma could become its president.
Her presidency would be a rerun of the present incumbent’s disastrous term, characterised by the country going full astern as its economy failed, unemployment rose and investors fled. Despite the initial promise of Operation Phakisa, the maritime sector has declined. Under another Zuma administration, the shipping industry – including harbours, ship-repair industry and other ancillary services – will continue to founder, and, for understandable reasons, local shipowners will continue to shun the national register.
Cyril Ramaphosa is the country’s slender hope for an economic revival that might – just might – allow the shipping sector to regain its halcyon days. But will the ANC cross its own Rubicon, choose Ramaphosa and begin the long, yet vital voyage to more agreeable waters?