Opening address at the South African Transport Conference by Mr Jeff Radebe, MP Minister of Transport, CSIR

It is once again my pleasure to be invited to deliver a keynote address to this South African Transport Conference. The period from 1994 when South Africa democratised was a hectic period of policy making and policy reconfiguration to meet the needs of a democratic state. There was no doubt when we started this process that the challenges facing our country were not only those of redressing through policy reformulation of the years of apartheid rule, but also of redressing the legacies that had been left by decades of colonialism and imperialism.

The task at hand was therefore much greater than we had anticipated. Thirteen years into our democracy, I can state without fear of contradiction that the democratic state has performed admirably well in responding to the challenges of policy reformulation. This was also a period through which we had to introduce new pieces of legislation that changed a number of issues relating to our new country. Some of these were:

* The recognition of the important role that women and youth should play in public and private life.
* The recognition of the important role that the youth should play in the democratic state.
* The smoothing of the democratic state into the family of nations from which it had been isolated.
* The creation of a social cohesive regime that would bring together communities that had been systematically separated.
* The reshaping of the country as a country that is rooted in, and is of the African continent.
* The response to the global challenges, such as environmental degradation, work force mobility and competition.
* The creation of an economic dispensation that catered for all of our people, rich and poor, young and old, able and disabled.
* The narrowing of the gaps between our rural and urban populations.
* The changing of global governance to respond to the needs of the developing world.

This conference comes at the back of a successful policy conference of the ruling party held at the end of last month. In conference, and as we have observed over a long period of time in government, our policy formulation has not been met with the requisite implementation of those noble policies. I am therefore happy to share with you honourable delegates what we in government have considered as challenges that have hampered the implementation of our policies. I am also happy that the Organising Committee has chosen this theme.

The skills set to respond to the implementation of policy have been severely depleted. A number of reasons account for this skills depletion, not least of which are the brain drain, our previous education inequalities and the global mobility of work force, job hopping and high turnover rate of public officials. Although South Africa is also a beneficiary of the global movement of the workforce to these shores, it is a small beneficiary in comparison to the developed economies and the countries of the west. To use an example of medicine for instance, a state in Canada has an oversupply of South African-born and trained doctors when our medical institutions are suffering a severe shortage of this profession.

While our country is leading in technological innovations and technologies in the continent, it is still very low in the ranks of most countries in the west. Coupled with these technological inadequacies, is the ever changing technology which requires that we must attract and keep a dedicated technological experts and innovators within our borders. As a state, we have not fairly addressed the social benefits for the projects we fund from the national fiscus. Public officials are justifiably preoccupied with the financial accounting to the total exclusion of the benefits that accrue to communities as a result of our policies and our infrastructure investment. The social benefit accounting should, in my view, be at the centre of the role of the developmental state. Surveys conducted about state performance should include issues previously considered as" soft issues," such as social cohesion, national reconciliation, racial harmonization and community happiness.

The South African tax collection regime has received accolades as among, if not the best, in the world. Our society has matured within a short space of time to be a tax paying culture country. Tax payment and social responsibilities are the most tacit benefits of an effective democratic system. There are, however, competing needs for the national fiscus that we have so successfully collected. This has an effect on national policy implementation as we prioritise those needs which will have maximum impact on our society. Government has ably steered the country towards a rapid global debt retirement scheme, and we have progressively reduced our external debt which was accumulated towards the last days of the apartheid regime. We are confident that the massive investment that the State has made into infrastructure will be sustainable in the long term and in transport, in particular, we will visibly witness these dividends in the shortest time possible.

Government is enjoined by the Constitution to consult widely in its policy formulation. The mandate of the government is dependent on the role of other stakeholders. We have, however, observed that some stakeholders have not put their shoulder to the wheel of transformation.

Firstly, there is observable price inflation if it is known the state will be bidding for the use of the resources and the expertise of the stakeholders. There is no clear example of this than the one we have observed in the property sector. Without due regard for the mediating land market system, certain landowners and property developers have inflated their prices in such a manner that land becomes out of the price reach for the state. My cabinet colleagues in
Agriculture and Land Affairs and Housing have raised this concern.

Secondly, the private sector has not come to the party in so far as the provision of public infrastructure is concerned. We acknowledge that by its own nature, the private sector is risk averse, is interested in the highest rate of return within the shortest period. We will, however, continue to champion the cause of public private partnerships. We call on the private sector to come to the party and share the risk with us, as government, so that we both can reap, in the long term, the benefits that will accrue from infrastructure investment.

Thirdly, policy implementation is preformed by agencies that report to government. These agencies have reduced the strain of over control by government. Government's oversight over these agencies has dramatically improved and most have executed their mandate very well. There is a greater need to reassert the role of the state of these agencies through shareholder compacts, stricter performance criteria and financial oversight.

Delegates, on a positive note, but also detrimental to effective policy implementation, we have become victims of our own success. The unintended consequence of our economic fundamentals has led to unparalleled and sustained economic growth. As government, we had not forecasted on this rapid growth and we have consequently been founding wanting in having appropriate policy responses. As an unintended consequence, our transport system is busting at the seams and is increasingly becoming inadequate in responding to the export led growth.

Our road network is increasingly becoming congested while we have not made the correct policy response to the usage of one of our underutilised endowments, our ocean for coastal shipping. I will keenly await the recommendations from the maritime experts, as to how we as government, can harness and efficiently massify the use of this resource for short sea transportation.

Our country does not count amongst the largest in geographical expanse. The challenge for policy implementation is not necessarily hindered by the size of the country but by our inherited spatial inequalities. The legacy of the homeland system is still haunting us. To redress the lack of infrastructure in these former homelands is going to require massive investments over a prolonged period of time. In our response we have sometimes been too hasty to consider the wisdom of synergistic approaches. If we are to depart from a premise of better late but better co-ordinated, we would not sit, in some areas, with roads that lead to nowhere, with schools without toilets, clinics with not even Panados, roads with no pedestrian facilities, and the list is not exhaustive.

Two critical parts of policy implementation are monitoring and evaluation and time framing. We have found that it is not only the skills that are in short supply, but the tools to monitor and the mechanism itself. Most of the documents that I have seen and studies that have been conducted have been conspicuous by their silence on these issues. I would therefore request that transport experts gathered here assist us in these critical areas of policy implementation. My department and I will keenly await and assess all recommendations in this regard.

We have developed one of the best financial accounting and internal auditing systems for our country. The downside of these instruments is that public officials are intimidated by these instruments and they are afraid to use state resources to address the problems that we face. I am not advocating for a laissez faire abuse of state resources and I can confirm that my cabinet colleagues and I are committed to rooting out financial abuses where they occur. Some public officials go to extraordinary lengths to put budget proposals but walk a short mile in using that budget to address our needs. We may need to consider the inclusion of failure to use government resources in a given financial year as a performance criterion for public managers.

In conclusion, I wish to congratulate the leadership and conference organisers for having, year after year, drawn national and international conference transport experts to this wonderful venue. The South African national Transport conference is a major event in the transport calendar. Even though it takes place during the conferencing month of July, it stands heads and shoulders above other conferences.

As I close, I wish you well in your deliberations. The resolutions of this conference will oil the machinery of my Department to achieve even more in its mandate. I have no doubt in my mind that the experts gathered here have the transport interests at heart and will provide guidance and direction as we locate transport at the centre of our economic growth.

I thank you.

Issued by: Department of Transport
9 July 2007