Critical Infrastructure

◆ During the unrest, the country's critical infrastructure such as the N3 national highway between KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng could not be used due to the burning and looting of trucks.

◆ Railway lines were stripped of metal, banks were robbed of cash and ATMs were carried away.

◆ Transnet told the panel that a lot of its infrastructure had not been classified as national key points, even though it was critical to the economy.

◆ Along its multipurpose pipeline, only the valves and the fuel depots are regarded as national key points.

◆ The two major ports in KwaZuluNatal, Richards Bay and the Port of Durban, which are important logistic hubs for the country, are not classified as national key points, leaving them vulnerable.

◆ Not one of the railway lines is designated a national key point.

◆ Transnet now wants to pursue the designation of certain infrastructure as critical or national key points in terms of the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act.

◆ They would like to see better co-ordination and informationsharing between the security services, particularly intelligence, and the bodies providing critical infrastructure such as Transnet, Prasa and Eskom.

◆ They have called for the revitalisation of the government's Security Managers Forum.

◆ Transnet has also suggested that if the state has difficulty in financing the costs of securing the ports, the port-using community should look at how they could contribute to covering the costs.