South Africa's public transport sector remains trite and relies too heavily on traditional solutions

Delays in developing policy and implementation have meant that the thinking within South Africa's public transport sector remains largely unimaginative and heavily reliant on traditional solutions. South Africa's rail system has not simply deteriorated over the past two decades – it has collapsed, and it continues to constitute one of South Africa's biggest challenges. Now is the time for us to really push the envelope and commit to developing alternative options that can be transformative and impactful, writes Andrew Ihsaan Gasnolar.

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Finance Minister Tito Mboweni, in his Supplementary Budget last year, "set out a roadmap to stabilise debt by improving our spending patterns, and creating a foundation for economic revival", but the consequences of the governing party having supported the stolen decade of Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma are serious and long-lasting.

In these troubled times, it will not be enough for South Africa to "close the mouth of the hippopotamus", but rather we will need to find imaginative and meaningful mechanisms for reform and structural adjustments for South Africa to not only survive the storm but also prepare for its future.

South Africa talks about confronting its own spatial Apartheid legacies, and a key and immediate mechanism to confront his legacy are rooted in how our transport networks function. Public Transport that ensures dignity, access, affordability, and reliability turns that spatial geography on its head. National Treasury in its 2021 Budget Review notes that the "largest proportional reduction of R1.3 billion to local government grants has been made in the public transport network grant because only six of the 13 cities receiving the grant have successfully launched public transport systems".

This is a missed opportunity to implement real public transport interventions that will achieve meaningful outcomes, put more money into the pocket of passengers, and enable South Africans to access government services, employment opportunities, healthcare facilities, amenities, and education facilities. Mboweni in his 2021 Budget has reminded us that State capacity remains weakened, and we will need to create public policy interventions that not only leapfrog beyond this inability to govern but also beyond the Apartheid spatial landscape of South Africa.

There is no doubt that the public transport sector should be a catalyst for economic opportunities and possibilities, and a mechanism for South Africans to connect in a more meaningful way to amenities and services. Instead, delays in developing policy and implementation have meant that the thinking within South Africa's public transport sector remains largely unimaginative and heavily reliant on road-based solutions.

South Africa's rail system has not simply deteriorated over the past two decades – it has collapsed, and it continues to constitute one of South Africa's biggest challenges. In 2009, the rail system, according to the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa's (Prasa) annual report, transported more than 645 million passengers a year (about 53 million passengers a month). A decade later that number dropped to about 240 million passengers a year (or 20 million passengers per month).

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There is an urgent need to ensure that the governance gaps and organisational capacity within Prasa are urgently dealt with, although the transport ministry has been extremely slow in appointing a permanent board and has only just last week appointed Zolani Kgosietsile Matthews as the new CEO – the first permanent CEO since Lucky Montana's departure in July 2015!

Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula has made efforts to address the COVID-19 situation as it affects the minibus taxi industry, which transports more than 15 million people each day in South Africa.

Mbalula also believes that there is now an opportunity to "transform the taxi industry". Talk of restructuring the taxi industry is not new. About a decade ago, several study tours were undertaken by government officials and consultants to countries across the globe, including cities in South America and Europe, in the hope of finding a solution.

South Africans subsequently saw the development of road-based public transport systems in Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Tshwane. The idea was that taxi operators would be encouraged to form registered businesses, and for local councils to then contract them to provide public transport in those cities.

This "transformation" in the sector was implemented through negotiations underpinned by South Africa's National Land Transport Act and supported by the fiscus in the form of the Public Transport National Grant. The grant structure has, since 2009/10, been appropriated in the region of R40-billion, while actual expenditure over the same period has only been in the region of R28-billion. The annual allocation over the current financial period is in the region of R6-billion.

Mbalula is currently offering taxi operators R5,000 each in terms of COVID-19 relief. This is allocated in Mboweni's budget adjustment in the form of R1,135 billion as "a once-off payment for all licensed taxi operators, provided that they are tax-registered, and drivers are registered for unemployment insurance". The taxi industry is demanding more and an estimated 45,000 taxi operators in June of last year abandoned their vehicles, intimidated fellow motorists, and blocked highways, leaving commuters across Gauteng stranded.

Critically, President Cyril Ramaphosa has highlighted the value of bringing social partners to the table and the need for working carefully at establishing a social compact that includes all relevant roleplayers to ensure that we can implement real structural changes.

There is no doubt that the COVID-19 relief package of R1,135-billion will simply not be enough to "transform" the minibus taxi industry, but rather there will be a need to reconfigure the room to ensure that all relevant stakeholders and roleplayers participate. The introduction of technology will simply not be enough, but South Africa needs a policy of incremental development whereby formal government agents can walk alongside the minibus taxi industry to achieve an end state.

Critically, this will require improvements to be made to the condition of vehicles across the country (with an important focus on universal access improvements), improving the route and system coverage so that passengers have the benefit of an expanded network, and how this road-based system can complement and support other modes of transport.

None of this work will simply happen overnight – we will need to confront the elephants in the room, particularly as we need to start developing a real strategy to not simply appropriate public funding once more for the formalisation of the minibus taxi industry. There are important lessons to be learned and adopted across South Africa particularly in how the public transport network grant is utilised, but also in what it enables.

Models such as those adopted in the Western Cape through pilot projects such as Red Dot and Blue Dot are interesting and important incremental steps that must be further considered and explored. Premier Alan Winde in his own state of the province address this year noted that the Red Dot project enabled a "fleet of over 100 minibus taxis undertook over 110 000 trips to get healthcare workers to and from work safely during curfew times".

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While the proposed Blue Dot pilot project will be launched by Winde and MEC Bonginkosi Madikizela this week outlining how the government will "provide financial incentives or rewards for improved quality of service and safety and it will use a five-star rating system" rooted in a pilot seeking to leverage technology and incentivise certain behavioural change within the taxi industry to enable improved standards from safety, reliability, and efficiency.

We need to develop a meaningful approach to the issue to ensure that we leverage skills development, infrastructure improvement, integration into the broader South African transport system, formalisation in part to ensure the protection of workers, particular drivers, and provide a strong and reliable public transport system in South Africa.

These are the building blocks we must focus on – and not only talk of subsidies and relief packages. Transport must integrate with our social and human settlement planning to ensure that our transport systems respond to the needs of the country as we restructure our collective futures.

- Andrew Ihsaan Gasnolar