Date: 28/06/2004
Source: Department of Transport
Title: J Radebe: Aviation & Allied Business Leadership Conference
REMARKS BY JEFF RADEBE, MP, MINISTER OF TRANSPORT, SOUTH AFRICA AT THE 10TH AVIATION AND ALLIED BUSINESS LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE, Nairobi, Kenya, 28 June 2004
Thank you for the honour of being able to attend this, the tenth Aviation and Allied Business leadership conference. In particular, this has given me the pleasure to meet my colleagues from Nigeria and Kenya, and I am delighted that we have already found common ground on a number of transport and aviation matters. The path is set for South Africa to integrate our own domestic transport initiatives into a wider continental agenda driven by NEPAD's mission to accelerate the growth and revitalise the veins and arteries of Africa's transport system to take Africa into this century and beyond.
One report about the October 2003 conference suggested that Governments should talk less and do more in the area of aviation and air transport. I couldn't agree more, but hasten to add that we should ensure that the "doing" is coordinated, coherent and is designed to improve the situation rather than make things worse through knee-jerk action. Thus, we still need to do some talking to keep us all on track. It is in that vein then that my comments should be received.
At the moment there is a serious gap between what our transport systems in Africa can achieve if we compare them to the challenges that NEPAD sets us. Despite major efforts over past decades, serious under-investment across the transport sector by states, state enterprises and even private capital, has seriously undermined the capacity of Africa's strategic yet fragile road, rail, lake and river and aviation to cope with even limited growth. My colleagues have already drawn attention to this matter.
One problem has been that individual sectors such as rail, road, marine and aviation frequently compete with one another for scarce state and donor funding resources. Rather than thinking along integrated, inter-modal lines, each transport sector thinks in silos, encouraging views that range road against rail, rail against air, maritime against air, and so on. We need to budget for transport infrastructure in an integrated manner, based on plans that accommodate the most appropriate forms of inter- and multi-modal cooperation.
But integrated thinking, operation and implementation by itself will not go far. We need to sustain those operations. So whilst we do whatever we can to train African pilots, flight engineers, technicians, air traffic controllers, civil aviation regulators, we should also provide timeframes to ensure that aircraft purchased, leased, and operated by African countries will be maintained and supported in Africa, by African companies, and by African artisans, mechanics, engineers. A small step at first would be to support all the training and aviation institutes that are dotted around the continent, alongside flying schools and some air motive industries. Joint recognition of each other's capabilities, courses, and certificates is long overdue.
The world we live in is a troubled place. As the minister responsible for transport matters generally in South Africa, I am only too conscious that the security environment has changed and is presenting new and greater technology, resource, training and infrastructure requirements on us all. Being in Kenya where some of the tragedy of this new world disorder has emerged makes this even more striking.
The USA has developed an elaborate and all-encompassing set of responses according to its own threat perceptions. But largely because of globalisation, their specific needs have become international requirements. The aviation sector is not immune to these pressures, but surely the task is to balance specific needs with the requirements of other scenarios and from own security environment, with all its commercial and human elements, using knowledge-based analysis and assessment.
It is interesting to note that the European Union has decided not to implement many of the security-related requirements around passenger information, documentation and so on until such time as the US has itself sorted these things out. Clearly, all of these issues, including the question of counter-measures to MANPADS, should be considered in an unemotional way, and in a manner that affirms our own rights and security, and the rights of our own people to dignity, self-respect, privacy and so on.
Whilst we must adopt a zero-tolerance attitude to terrorism in aviation, at the end of the day, the greatest threat we face in the aviation world remains air safety. Sadly, Africa cannot boast the safest skies or industry in the world today. Not only do we all have a lot of work to do about upper air space controls, air navigation cooperation and so on, we still need to take note that most accidents involve some sort of human error or incompetence, either in the workshop hangar and maintenance facility, or in the cockpit.
Another matter of great concern must be the dramatic increase in unscheduled, ad hoc cargo operations where operators often fly by the seat of their pants. The lesson surely must be that we must resist completely the temptation to shift resources away from the traditional requirements of air safety towards as yet undefined and untested security-related infrastructure.
We must continue to invest resources and skills in the technical and operational areas of all aviation transport matters. We must integrate aviation security issues in particular much more closely than we have with the cooperative arrangements within and between national administrations. All plans for developing the sector, including safety and security and training components, must include costing and investment assessments before they are presented to decision- makers. Critically, we must expand and extend the highest standards that the aviation sector is famous for and ultimately depends on. And we need to improve communication to our people about these matters as well.
I am humbled by the high regard that South Africa is held on the continent and in the world, and that my country is blessed with tremendous resources and capacities, in our people, our natural resources and our infrastructure. Great good can come out of this position, but so can great harm if we do not harness the potential that stirs in South Africa's bosom towards cooperation with our brothers and sisters across the continent.
African countries that have walked in freedom for decades before our own liberation have developed skills, knowledge and experience in many, many sectors of human endeavour, including the aviation sector, and often in the greatest difficulty, that we can only admire. We South Africans still have a long road to walk to get our own people into technical and business fields they were excluded from through the criminality of apartheid.
It is in this spirit, and with this knowledge, that I have urged our transport sector to embrace Africa's experience and knowledge in all fields. Drawn as I am from the ANC, I know this can only be done in partnership, with mutual respect and through hard work so that Africa can take its rightful place, once again, in the world.
Issued by: Department of Transport
28 June 2004
Source: Department of Transport (http://www.transport.gov.za)
Source: Department of Transport
Title: J Radebe: Aviation & Allied Business Leadership Conference
REMARKS BY JEFF RADEBE, MP, MINISTER OF TRANSPORT, SOUTH AFRICA AT THE 10TH AVIATION AND ALLIED BUSINESS LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE, Nairobi, Kenya, 28 June 2004
Thank you for the honour of being able to attend this, the tenth Aviation and Allied Business leadership conference. In particular, this has given me the pleasure to meet my colleagues from Nigeria and Kenya, and I am delighted that we have already found common ground on a number of transport and aviation matters. The path is set for South Africa to integrate our own domestic transport initiatives into a wider continental agenda driven by NEPAD's mission to accelerate the growth and revitalise the veins and arteries of Africa's transport system to take Africa into this century and beyond.
One report about the October 2003 conference suggested that Governments should talk less and do more in the area of aviation and air transport. I couldn't agree more, but hasten to add that we should ensure that the "doing" is coordinated, coherent and is designed to improve the situation rather than make things worse through knee-jerk action. Thus, we still need to do some talking to keep us all on track. It is in that vein then that my comments should be received.
At the moment there is a serious gap between what our transport systems in Africa can achieve if we compare them to the challenges that NEPAD sets us. Despite major efforts over past decades, serious under-investment across the transport sector by states, state enterprises and even private capital, has seriously undermined the capacity of Africa's strategic yet fragile road, rail, lake and river and aviation to cope with even limited growth. My colleagues have already drawn attention to this matter.
One problem has been that individual sectors such as rail, road, marine and aviation frequently compete with one another for scarce state and donor funding resources. Rather than thinking along integrated, inter-modal lines, each transport sector thinks in silos, encouraging views that range road against rail, rail against air, maritime against air, and so on. We need to budget for transport infrastructure in an integrated manner, based on plans that accommodate the most appropriate forms of inter- and multi-modal cooperation.
But integrated thinking, operation and implementation by itself will not go far. We need to sustain those operations. So whilst we do whatever we can to train African pilots, flight engineers, technicians, air traffic controllers, civil aviation regulators, we should also provide timeframes to ensure that aircraft purchased, leased, and operated by African countries will be maintained and supported in Africa, by African companies, and by African artisans, mechanics, engineers. A small step at first would be to support all the training and aviation institutes that are dotted around the continent, alongside flying schools and some air motive industries. Joint recognition of each other's capabilities, courses, and certificates is long overdue.
The world we live in is a troubled place. As the minister responsible for transport matters generally in South Africa, I am only too conscious that the security environment has changed and is presenting new and greater technology, resource, training and infrastructure requirements on us all. Being in Kenya where some of the tragedy of this new world disorder has emerged makes this even more striking.
The USA has developed an elaborate and all-encompassing set of responses according to its own threat perceptions. But largely because of globalisation, their specific needs have become international requirements. The aviation sector is not immune to these pressures, but surely the task is to balance specific needs with the requirements of other scenarios and from own security environment, with all its commercial and human elements, using knowledge-based analysis and assessment.
It is interesting to note that the European Union has decided not to implement many of the security-related requirements around passenger information, documentation and so on until such time as the US has itself sorted these things out. Clearly, all of these issues, including the question of counter-measures to MANPADS, should be considered in an unemotional way, and in a manner that affirms our own rights and security, and the rights of our own people to dignity, self-respect, privacy and so on.
Whilst we must adopt a zero-tolerance attitude to terrorism in aviation, at the end of the day, the greatest threat we face in the aviation world remains air safety. Sadly, Africa cannot boast the safest skies or industry in the world today. Not only do we all have a lot of work to do about upper air space controls, air navigation cooperation and so on, we still need to take note that most accidents involve some sort of human error or incompetence, either in the workshop hangar and maintenance facility, or in the cockpit.
Another matter of great concern must be the dramatic increase in unscheduled, ad hoc cargo operations where operators often fly by the seat of their pants. The lesson surely must be that we must resist completely the temptation to shift resources away from the traditional requirements of air safety towards as yet undefined and untested security-related infrastructure.
We must continue to invest resources and skills in the technical and operational areas of all aviation transport matters. We must integrate aviation security issues in particular much more closely than we have with the cooperative arrangements within and between national administrations. All plans for developing the sector, including safety and security and training components, must include costing and investment assessments before they are presented to decision- makers. Critically, we must expand and extend the highest standards that the aviation sector is famous for and ultimately depends on. And we need to improve communication to our people about these matters as well.
I am humbled by the high regard that South Africa is held on the continent and in the world, and that my country is blessed with tremendous resources and capacities, in our people, our natural resources and our infrastructure. Great good can come out of this position, but so can great harm if we do not harness the potential that stirs in South Africa's bosom towards cooperation with our brothers and sisters across the continent.
African countries that have walked in freedom for decades before our own liberation have developed skills, knowledge and experience in many, many sectors of human endeavour, including the aviation sector, and often in the greatest difficulty, that we can only admire. We South Africans still have a long road to walk to get our own people into technical and business fields they were excluded from through the criminality of apartheid.
It is in this spirit, and with this knowledge, that I have urged our transport sector to embrace Africa's experience and knowledge in all fields. Drawn as I am from the ANC, I know this can only be done in partnership, with mutual respect and through hard work so that Africa can take its rightful place, once again, in the world.
Issued by: Department of Transport
28 June 2004
Source: Department of Transport (http://www.transport.gov.za)
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