President Cyril Ramaphosa has set up a task team to intervene in the service delivery and governance challenges in eThekwini municipality, with a particular focus on resolving challenges at the Port of Durban, which has been hampered by long-standing inefficiencies.
The task team is led by presidency director-general Phindile Baleni and ANC KwaZulu-Natal heavyweight Mike Mabuyakhulu. It will be required to report to the president every three weeks on “how we are repositioning eThekwini and how we are addressing the challenges at Durban port”, Ramaphosa said.
The president was speaking on Thursday at the opening of the Newlyn PX Terminal adjacent to the Port of Durban.
“We are also going to be working with the unions, business and Transnet. All the problems and challenges that we have in this part of the country are now being addressed in a pointed way through collaboration,” he said.
The task team comes ahead of the May 29 elections, where the ANC faces its toughest electoral showing yet. Various polls have shown that the governing party is likely to lose its majority and its electoral support is projected to fall below 40% for the first time.
The province has been a hotbed of political activity, with the ANC, DA, EFF and the IFP all launching their election manifestos in Durban in the past two months. The province is also the home of the newly formed uMkhonto weSizwe party, which is backed by former president Jacob Zuma. The party is expected to shave off electoral support from the ANC.
Durban has been bogged down by myriad service delivery issues, such as the provision of water, sanitation and electricity. The metro’s irregular expenditure, which has doubled to R2.4bn, and failure to collect debt put pressure on service delivery, according to the auditor-general’s report for 2022/23.
Service delivery was halted in February and March during a three-week strike by municipal workers affiliated to the SA Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu). They downed tools demanding salary adjustments similar to those received by workers in other metropolitan municipalities.
The key Durban port has seen better days. It was ranked as the 63rd best container terminal worldwide six years ago. But after years of operational decay, the terminal ranked a lowly 341 out of 348 ports and terminals as measured by the World Bank and S&P Global Market Intelligence’s 2022 container port performance index.
Congestion at the port came to a head in the last months of 2023, with ships waiting up to two weeks to dock and 70,000 shipping containers stranded on ships off Durban.
“This is the team that will reposition eThekwini and revitalise Durban and make sure that this part of our country is repositioned and repackaged for success,” Ramaphosa said.
“Transnet reported a few days ago that the first 10 of 45 fully assembled haulers have arrived at the Durban Container Terminal, a further 25 expected in the middle of this month and the last 10 will arrive at the end of next month,” KwaZulu-Natal premier Nomusa Dube-Ncube said.
“Management at Durban terminals indicated that the equipment will enable better use of straddle carriers and enhance the terminal’s use of its fleet, thus contributing to improved efficiency.”
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