What’s up with railway? Er… what railway?
Anyone can see SA’s rail infrastructure is in a shambolic state and that policing or security of this vital component of the country’s economy is non-existent.
Overhead lines used to deliver power to locomotives are stolen. Stations are vandalised and robbed of metal and anything useful, leaving them ruined shells. How the Passenger Rail Agency of SA (Prasa) intends restarting any kind of service on this destroyed infrastructure is beyond imagination.
Theft and vandalism isn’t limited to the passenger rail network, which by definition is close to human habitation. Chrome companies and coal traders are pulling their hair out over the lack of availability of trains to get their minerals to the coast and delivered to their offshore customers.
Transnet Freight Rail (TFR) blames theft and vandalism of its network, with copper the main target. There were more than 5,000 such incidents in 2020. The problem, according to TFR, is worsening.
Overlay this with the desperate pleas from SA’s mining industry for improved infrastructure, be it rail or ports. With better access to rail, which is far cheaper than trucking, and efficient harbours, the minerals sector can create jobs and revenue for all the country’s citizens.
These questions beg to be asked: who benefits from the wanton destruction of the rail network; and why is policing of such economic sabotage so lax?
The questions are too important to be left unanswered, yet this problem has been escalating for years with no signs of inroads by the police, crime intelligence networks or the rail utilities. When do the alarm bells go off for this crisis to get the attention it deserves?
PROTECTING PRIVACY
With rising concerns over cybersecurity and privacy around the world, a move by SA’s information regulator, the custodian of privacy laws in the country, may point to difficulty companies such as Facebook encounter in implementing changes to their platforms in future.
Last week, the regulator said Facebook cannot share any contact information it collects from WhatsApp users with its other properties without first obtaining permission from the agency.
This comes as WhatsApp, the world’s largest instant messaging service, and its parent, Facebook, face a backlash since the start of the year after proposed changes to its privacy policy. The changes would see WhatsApp sharing more data with Facebook’s other companies, such as Messenger and Instagram. Though WhatsApp has been clear that messages and calls are still private, users have voiced their concern, forcing implementation date to shift from February to May.
Beyond the guidelines given by the information regulator, the company founded by billionaire Mark Zuckerberg has been accused of treating the SA market differently to Europe, where users seem to have greater protection. The regulator raised as a central concern that citizens of the EU will receive “significantly higher privacy protection than people in SA and Africa”, though local privacy legislation is modelled after that in Europe.
While public pressure has done much to change Facebook’s approach, there is a distinct possibility that, as with the EU and SA, regulators will have the final say on what WhatsApp can and cannot do.