LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Housing policy needs more than good intentions

I’d like to know what Michael Morris means by “everyone’s right to adequate housing” (“Policies to reimagine divided cities still outstanding”, Letters, July 14).

Government housing policies don’t always produce the right outcomes. After World War 2, the British government built thousands of prefabricated houses, which were supposed to last 10 years. Many were still occupied 50 years later.

They were superseded by council estates providing a subsidised rental home. These deteriorated quickly until sold to their occupiers at a discount, whereupon they gained a new lease of life and became a valuable asset.

In short, throwing public money at a problem doesn’t always fix it. There is still a housing shortage in the UK. Public housing seems to work in Hong Kong and Singapore. That’s assuming you don’t have vertigo and don’t mind living in a shoebox 30 storeys up.

Bernard Benson

Parklands

Why are infrastructure projects still not materialising?

The article, “SA has money to invest — it just does not have enough projects to invest in” (July 13) refers.

The economically literate in South Africa have for years and years explained that growing an economy means the government sitting down with the private sector and providing shovel-ready infrastructure projects, which the guys with the money then build, and businesses/individuals use, like roads or ports. It really is not rocket science.

I would love a straight answer as to why this is not happening.

Andrea Robertson

Via Business Day online

Steel tariffs need broader industrial policy support

Public debate too often treats tariffs as either a complete solution or a complete mistake. They are neither.

In a sector as globally distorted as steel, tariffs and safeguards are defensive instruments. They provide trade remedies, close price gaps and provide time and space for local industry to adjust. They cannot, on their own, rebuild competitiveness, restore infrastructure demand, enforce localisation or modernise production.

This is why the tariff debate must be reframed. The question is not whether South Africa should protect steel companies. The question is whether South Africa still intends to preserve a strategic industrial capability that underpins infrastructure delivery, energy security, rail rehabilitation, mining supply chains and manufacturing employment.

South Africa’s steel sector is not facing a normal downturn. It is operating in a global market shaped by chronic oversupply, subsidised production, weak local demand, logistics failures and rising import penetration.

When imported steel enters the country at prices local producers cannot meet, the effect is widespread. It moves through fabrication, mining inputs, construction, rail, energy infrastructure, engineering services and the communities that depend on those industries.

Tariffs can create breathing room. But breathing room only matters if it is used. That means three things.

First, trade measures must be properly enforced. Duties that are undermined by exemptions, product reclassification, under-invoicing or transhipment do not protect domestic industry. They create a formal policy response with limited real-world effect. Customs enforcement, import monitoring and product-level verification are therefore not just administrative details ― they are central to the policy working.

Second, public infrastructure must generate domestic industrial demand. South Africa has a substantial pipeline of rail, grid, water and transport investment. If that demand is met largely through imported steel and imported steel-intensive products, public spending will leak out of the economy instead of strengthening it. Localisation should not be a slogan attached to procurement documents; it must be enforceable, measurable and linked to specific product categories where domestic capability exists or can realistically be rebuilt.

Third, local producers must accept that protection carries obligations. Tariffs cannot become a shelter for poor reliability, weak customer responsiveness or avoidable cost escalation. If the state creates space for local industry, then industry must use that space to improve supply discipline, invest in capability and serve downstream users competitively. Protection without performance will not retain political or commercial legitimacy.

The local steel sector therefore needs a coordinated package, not a single instrument. Trade defence must be linked to localisation. Localisation must be linked to public procurement. Procurement must be linked to investment certainty. Investment certainty must be linked to modernisation, including lower-carbon production pathways where commercially realistic.

South Africa cannot out-produce China or out-subsidise the largest industrial economies, but it can make a strategic choice about which capabilities it cannot afford to lose. Steel is one of them. Tariffs are not the end of that strategy ― they are the beginning.

Charles Dednam

Secretary-general, South African Iron and Steel Institute.

Madlanga commission needs stronger enforcement powers

The article “’Useless sick note’ delays Andrea Johnson’s Madlanga commission testimony” (July 13) refers.

It is a joke. She was supposedly “rushed to hospital” but was only booked off until July 15. And it was called in by her bodyguards.

If she has a lawyer, he or she should have to account for this. The commission has done great work but it needs more teeth; otherwise this disrespectful behaviour will continue.

Blair Hutchings

Via Business Day online