EXPO A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY FOR AFRICA
ABSORBED by the Arabian Gulf crisis last week, I missed a major waypoint in South African maritime celebration: the completion of Cape Town’s Alfred Basin 150 years ago.
Imagine what it was like discharging cargo into small boats and lighters in the open anchorage in Table Bay. Some cargoes were extremely bulky and heavy and included parts for eight steam locomotives and railway lines for the railway from Cape Town to Wellington that was opened six years before the completion of Alfred Basin.
The need for a harbour was underlined further by frequent strandings on Woodstock Beach and elsewhere around the bay. Indeed, while the Alfred Basin was under construction, the “Great Gale” of May 17, 1865, drove 19 ships ashore in one night.
That new harbour would have two main components – a breakwater and a dug-out basin. Construction of the former began officially in 1860 when Prince Alfred, then a 16-year-old Royal Naval midshipman, tipped a load of stone at the base of what became the breakwater.
The basin was dug by local convicts and by some brought from other British colonies. Life was tough for those miscreants who were housed in the Breakwater Prison.
With the wharves lined with handhewn stone dug from the basin and from the massive quarry, the source of the stone for the breakwater, Alfred Basin was completed on June 15, 1869, and, a month later, a cofferdam was removed to allow the sea to flood the dug-out basin. Much still had to be done to finish the harbour project, and only in May 1870 did the tug Gnu tow the brig Haitienne through The Cut to inaugurate the new Alfred Basin. Six months later, Prince Alfred, in the meantime given the title Duke of Edinburgh and promoted to captain in the Royal Navy, officially opened the Alfred Basin and Robinson Dry Dock.
Also built at the time and sheltered from the swell by the breakwater was the Outer Basin whose seaward jetty became known as Number One Jetty. In my kortbroek days, the original wooden structure was my happy hunting ground for tug rides. Some years ago, the timber jetty was replaced by a concrete structure on which several buildings were erected and it remains the berth for the port’s highly manoeuvrable multi-directional tugs, pilot boats and floating crane.
Two extraneous factors influenced shipping. In the interior in 1867, the first known diamond discovery began foreign interest in the possibility of great wealth hidden in the geological structures and river beds of the Northern Cape. However, the fortune realised by the sale of the so-called Star of South Africa in 1869 started a massive diamond rush that injected urgency to economic development.
From far and wide, thousands of fortune seekers booked passages to the Cape, creating a local shipping boom as each vessel disembarked new diamond hunters. The increased demand at the diamond fields for food, clothing, construction materials and mining equipment forced the rapid development of the railways.
By 1874, the railway line through mountain passes and across the veld linked Cape Town to Kimberley, a busy line that carried hundreds of passengers and freight, mostly landed at the new Cape Town harbour for the mines and for the settlers in the diamond fields.
Perhaps it was fortunate that in November 1869 – before the Alfred Basin was commissioned – the Suez Canal opened, taking most of the ships moving between Europe and the East, including those on the Australasian trade. Yet the number of vessels calling at the Cape increased, thanks to the diamond rush, and, from 1888, the discovery of gold that brought even more people and cargo, and therefore ships.
Older Docklanders may recall coasters working cargo in Alfred Basin. For me, the basin held a distinct fascination in those kortbroek years. I&J’s steam trawlers berthed herring-bone fashion, their bows to the quay.
Those inward from the fishing grounds discharged fish in wicker baskets, laced with ice. Snoek boats were also in the basin. A highlight of my rambling around the basin was a steam tug assisting a freighter into the Robinson Dry Dock, a tricky operation as trawlers at the North Quay usually thwarted an easy approach to the dry dock entrance.
Basket-bearing workers carried coal aboard steam tugs and trawlers, tipping the coal from their baskets into the vessels’ bunkers.
More genteel are the current activities around the basin; from hotels and restaurants, exotic aromas fill the air and expensive leisure craft now line the cleaner wharves while the old quarry site now forms an extended marina. A swing bridge across The Cut denies folks a Penny Ferry ride.
I liked the fishiness, the smoky atmosphere, and the true taste of salt of those kortbroek years. And I enjoyed slaptjips from the old Harbour Café. BASIC premise: Eskom needs money, in large part because municipal debt to Eskom is very high. At present the government bails out Eskom and it bails out failing municipalities. Problem: there is not enough money.
Solution: instead of the government giving bail-out loans to both Eskom and to municipalities, it should give the loans to municipalities, but earmarked and secured for payment direct to Eskom. That way the money works twice. And Eskom will have a better balance sheet because the money will be coming in as a payment for electricity delivered, not as a loan.
So as long as the new brooms at Eskom don’t steal the money claiming it as a reward for securing the cash infusion, this should work. CHINA will host the first ChinaAfrica Economic and Trade Expo in Hunan province tomorrow and on Friday.
In addition to more than 50 African countries that have confirmed their participation, a number of international bodies such as the UN Industrial Development Organisation, World Food Programme and the World Trade Organisation will send representatives.
At least 1 000 Africans are expected to attend the expo as invited guests or traders. This event is a further demonstration of the ever-growing Sino-African relationship which traverses a gamut of issues, from historical similarities, political affinity and aneconomic reliance to the recently deepening people-to-people relations.
Last year, China-Africa trade reached $204.2 billion (R2.9 trillion), up 20% year-on-year. China has been Africa’s largest trading partner for 10 years. Thus, the expo seems to be an expected initiative between two parties that have had an impressively growing relationship.
African entrepreneurs, alongside their Chinese counterparts, will showcase their products, no doubt culminating in bilateral trade and infrastructure agreements.
The expo will coincide with the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan.
With the Sino-US trade tensions offering a cheerless backdrop to what portends to be an awkward summit, issues concerning the developing world are not expected to dominate debate.
The expo thus assumes even more importance in an international system that is currently undergoing a resurgence of ultra-nationalism, insular sentiment and antipathy towards immigrants who are not of Western provenance.
While this context is regrettable in an era where globalisation is expected to imbue the world with tolerance and an acceptance of major cities, especially, as cultural and national melting pots, it provides the developing world opportune impetus to concentrate on being principals and arbiters of their regions and affairs.
For almost the whole of Africa, China has become an indispensable player in helping the continent to surmount its myriad challenges.
While Sino-African trade and economic ties have grown impressively, Africa remains rooted to the foot of the global food chain.
The opposite is the case with China, a country that just four decades ago was an agro-based, underdeveloped, poor economy but has risen to become the secondbiggest economy in the world.
By next year, China plans to totally eliminate poverty among its citizens.
Lin Songtian, China’s ambassador to South Africa, often evokes the estimated 700 million people that the Chinese government has lifted out of poverty since the advent of economic reforms in 1978.
Prevailing circumstances have seen a surge in private Chinese and African citizens trading places between the regions with the intention of putting down roots in their respective countries.
While this is in kilter with the trend of globalisation, and has also precipitated tension that emerges from ignorance of each other, as well racial confrontation and the scramble for economic opportunities.
Opportunities such as those offered at the expo should be used to demonstrate China’s good intentions as it relates with Africa.
It’s encouraging that since the onset of the US-China trade war, Africa’s non-traditional exports such as meat, fruit, nuts and tobacco have improved.
Trademaps estimates that meat exports to China from the Southern African Development Community had improved by 240%.
If this momentum is sustained, it will help Africa to invest more in land, climate change and hydro technology. The expo will have a lasting legacy if it touches on this.
Monyae is the director of the centre for Africa-China studies at the University of Johannesburg