The recent trip that public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan made to China to resolve the dispute between Transnet and its Chinese locomotive supplier in that country was not immediately successful
In May, Gordhan led a delegation to China to meet its counterparts in the Chinese government, to discuss the delivery of locomotives and spare parts by rail equipment manufacturer CRRC E-loco.
He was accompanied on the trip, which was ordered by President Cyril Ramaphosa, by three Eskom executives including acting CEO Calib Cassim. The hope was that as both Transnet and CRRC-E-loco are state owned, the dispute could be resolved at an intergovernmental level.
The origin of the dispute was Transnet’s cancellation of a tender contract for 1,064 diesel and electric locomotives, the bulk of which were to be supplied by CRRC. The reason was that the contract was said to be tainted by state-capture corruption.
The cancellation meant that CRRC could not complete the supply of the order and refused to supply parts, with the result that more than 120 relatively new locomotives are out of service because of a lack of parts.
Gordhan told members of the National Council of Provinces’ select committee on public enterprises and communication on Friday that the battles with the Chinese suppliers of locomotives were continuing, “notwithstanding our visit to China”. While he did not go into detail about the sticking points in the negotiations, he did say he remained optimistic about the matter.
The minister appeared with Transnet executives to brief MPs on what steps were being taken to improve the operations of the various Transnet divisions.
He said Transnet was making steady progress in improving its operations and investing in the future.
The state-owned freight rail, port and oil pipeline company has been plagued by cable theft on its Johannesburg-Durban corridor, which has dramatically reduced the volumes of goods it has been able to transport. Commodity producers in particular have lost billions of rand in revenue due to the constraints on getting their goods to the ports.
Gordhan said Transnet was investing in infrastructure, equipment and personnel.
“While there are still gaps in terms of operational expectations from various sectors, there are very clear plans in terms of in- year and medium-term improvements in respect of each of the components of Transnet.
“There is no doubt is that what we require is a multiplicity of initiatives firstly, in terms of, for example, the number of cranes available at our ports; secondly, in terms of tugs and other essential [vessels] for the waterside operations of the ports authority, and thirdly on the rail side.”
The rail operations of Transnet, the minister said, were affected by the condition of the railway lines and the repeated problems of copper theft and other forms of theft and destruction of infrastructure which he state and Transnet were still not able to get on top of.
Group Transnet CEO Portia Derby noted that between May 25 and June 1, Transnet rail had suffered copper cable theft amounting to 13.4km. Recently there had also been quite a few derailments mainly due to a lack of maintenance on the track, which had affected the volumes it could transport.
Derby noted that SA’s international ranking in terms of its container terminals was closely related to the amount of port equipment available, and there was a programme in place to increase this.
Transnet Freight Rail commercial GM Bonginkosi Mabasa reported that in 2021/22, 1,700km of cable was stolen, which fell to 1,100km in 2022/23 but remained a critical erosion of value.
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