Launch of 'Moving South Africa - The Action Agenda' by the Minister of Transport, Mac Maharaj
Pretoria, 13 May 1999
Today I am proud to present Moving South Africa - the Action Agenda, our strategic framework to deliver on the vision we have set for the transport system in South Africa.
Moving South Africa - the Action Agenda:
Today's launch of this Action Agenda is indeed special. On a national level, for the first time we have a vision for transport that is focussed on customer needs: be they freight, urban passenger, tourist, or the forgotten customers ... the disabled or the rural poor cut off from the mainstream of our economy.
It also an historic milestone for the Department of Transport. Over the past two years we have worked intensively on developing this strategy. We have conducted exhaustive research, we have consulted widely, and we have tested proposals through rigorous an alysis and modelling in consultation with stakeholders and the public.
Since the release of our draft report in September last year we have had some tough but fruitful debates both inside and outside government.
The result is a strategic framework with a high degree of consensus amongst all key stakeholders including government, its parastatals, organised providers, labour and customers.
In certain areas sufficient consensus has not yet been achieved. These include:
On these issues we outline the need for clear strategic choices, present options for further consideration and signal our intention to take the process forward speedily.
Let me pause briefly here to reflect briefly on certain lessons we have learnt through this process.
Moving South Africa has been unique in many ways. We proceeded very differently from the classic top-down methods of policy development.
From the outset we committed ourselves firmly to the principles of consultation, transparency and open debate; with an equally clear commitment to delivering a rigorously data-driven product. These principles remain at the heart of the process today.
The strategy was, from the start, cast against the background of national and customer goals, and what would emerge from the facts was where the critical gaps were and where trade-offs have to be made.
This has proved to us that if we focus our minds collectively on distilling the key strategic issues from objectively verifiable facts, then - and only then - are we are able to develop a clear basis for consensus across diverse interests.
Our debates were driven not by opinion or emotion, but by reference to the challenges revealed by the data.
This formed a common bedrock of information that we could collectively share.
The significance of this cannot be over-estimated: It allowed for an informed process of debate in which all stakeholders had to jointly confront the fact that clear trade-offs and choices would have to be made between limited resources, demands for rapid delivery, specific customer goals and the over- arching national goals set by government in terms of the RDP and GEAR .
This constructive tension, set against the quantified realities of limited choice, ensured that we were able at all times to focus on a critical path driven by the twin priorities of serving differentiated customer demands and national goals.
The experience of negotiating these complexities has been invaluable in providing my Department with the necessary experience to rapidly develop policy which will carry the support of a broad swathe of stakeholders into the future.
The Action Agenda itself sets the basic boundaries of future policy processes. It is the skeleton to which successive administrations will be able to add flesh, guiding future short- and medium-term decisions.
Let me now return to the unfolding implementation of this Action Agenda.
While the Moving South Africa process has been evolving, the National Department of Transport has been undergoing a parallel process of transformation and restructuring itself into an organisation focussed on policy, strategic planning and implementation, and effective regulation.
The department has downsized from 1,400 to 250 staff members as its role has been re-focussed on establishing a transport vision driven by customer and national objectives, and by operational goals aimed at creating effective institutions and enforcing cle ar rules.
We are clear that service provision is the concern of individual businesses, local authorities, agencies and customers. The key roles of government, then, can be summarised as supporting, monitoring and enabling effective service delivery.
The strategic framework we launch today is about action in the transport platform to improve service to passengers and customers.
FOR PASSENGER CUSTOMERS, it is about action to unwind the legacy of commuter- based public transport and investment patterns which were focussed on meeting the needs of a privileged minority.
At its core:
FOR FREIGHT CUSTOMERS, the Action Agenda is about action to unwind the legacy of a transport system which emerged through inward industrialisation, which was the hallmark of apartheid economic policy.
At its core:
Fundamentally, the vision before you today is about speeding up delivery through sustainable action which focusses resources in those areas that will achieve maximum delivery impact.
These are not just plans - they are the decisions by my Department. They provide the common thread, the agreed playing field and the rules of the game around which future policy, government action and stakeholder decisions will be wound.
The work has already begun:
Our strategic action of focussing investment behind the creation of dense corridors and nodes for public transport has already set the stage for a wide range of programmes underway in all three spheres of government.
I am proud to announce that my Department, in partnership with the Kwazulu- Natal Department of Transport and the Durban Transitional Metropolitan Council, has entered into a partnership to fundamentally restructure public transport in the Durban Metro area as a flagship demonstration project of the Moving South Africa Action Agenda.
Planning work has already begun and each aspect of the project (for example the building the country's first Metropolitan Transport Authority, designing intermodal transport systems and restructuring municipal bus services and other public transport modes to support these systems) is being structured so as to realise the Action Agenda's vision of integrated delivery on the ground.
Since 1994 Urban Corridors (jointly developed between my department, various provinces and local authorities) have already provided us with opportunities to increase density through integrated development approaches linking transport, land-use and economic planning.
The key projects embodying these principles are the Mabopane-Centurion Development Corridor, Baralink, Wetton-Lansdowne, Mdantsane-East London and Germiston-Daveyton corridors, and the Warwick Triangle in Durban.
The design of bus contracts for tender is now being more tightly aligned to our corridor vision, giving concrete expression to the Action Agenda's insistence on the appropriate deployment of optimal transport modes.
Similarly, my Department is addressing the challenge of rapidly turning round commuter rail service efficiency levels by building a close partnership between the SARCC, provinces and local authorities.
This will lead to a systematic process of evaluating the appropriateness or otherwise of rail as a mode of transport in each and every rail corridor in the country. Where it is shown that rail does not have a future in any particular corridor, the hard de cision will be taken to close rail services and replace these with the appropriate road-based alternatives.
Ladies and gentleman, we have learned some hard facts from the Moving South Africa process.
One of its toughest revelations has been the extent of the crisis which faces public transport as a result of the long legacy of neglect for re-investment.
The data we have had to take on board is shocking:
These facts have not only highlighted how close we have come to system unsustainability in service provision, but have also shown us the dangerous levels of safety risk that pervade the entire system.
For this reason, we have already begun to take the following steps:
All these initiatives to upgrade and replenish vehicles in the public transport fleet provide a once-off opportunity to also achieve significant gains over a fairly short period of time in improving physical access to public transport.
High floor vehicles with narrow aisles and inadequate supporting technology have historically meant that public transport has been inaccessible to a large section of special needs customers - particularly persons with disabilities, the frail and the aged.
The challenge now is to ensure that infrastructure programmes, particularly in the core networks, are aligned to remove the barriers to physical access.
Let me now turn more directly to traffic safety issues.
What the Moving South Africa process has made starkly clear is the extent to which effective and consistent enforcement is a necessary precondition to the success of any road traffic safety strategy.
If anything, enforcement has been the Achilles Heel of government's programme in transport. The constitutional realities of three-tier government, our experience in traffic safety work and the three phases of the Arrive Alive campaign (together with the de tailed analysis conducted by MSA) have all made it clear that the solution lies in a framework of institutionalised cooperative governance.
The Road Traffic Management Corporation Act passed by Parliament in March, and to which the President has assented, aims to provide just such a framework.
Over the coming months the Road Traffic Management Corporation will be created, supported by its sustainable funding mechanism and embodying in concrete form what MSA has called the co-ordination agenda.
The RTMC will for the first time provide a platform from which government will be able to ensure effective, consistent and hard-hitting road traffic law enforcement.
The Action Agenda also set out a range of areas in which further, more detailed policy and strategy work was required. These areas, as you can see in the National Department of Transport's Business Plan, include Rural Transport Policy, detailed policy on t ransport for persons with disabilities, a funding strategy process, and the quantification of externalities.
You will note in addition that my Department is working in close support of the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism as it develops a Tourism Strategy for South Africa.
In Freight Transport a range of initiatives is already underway.
Firstly, my Department is currently working within the National Export Advisory Committee to the Minister of Trade and Industry, and has been mandated to convene the Committee on Transport and Logistics which is tasked with developing appropriate strategie s to support sector-specific export strategies.
This initiative is the critical path through which our system-wide action agenda can be cascaded down to develop differentiated and tailor-made solutions to specific sectors of exporters.
Secondly, a joint Steering Committee between Portnet and my Department is already at work developing the basic framework for the implementation of our ports policy.
I have also been particularly encouraged by the extent to which the Department of Public Enterprises, Portnet, the Department of Trade and Industry and my own Department have been working together to ensure that port restructuring, port investment, SDI pro grammes and national industrial and transport strategy are fully integrated.
I am equally pleased to note the work that the South African National Roads Agency in identifying a strategic road network, and in preparing the way for the appropriate choices which will have to be made regarding investment, technical standards and regula tion between the strategic and supporting freight networks.
Similarly I have been encouraged by the synergy between this strategy and the proposals emerging from the restructuring processes in the various transport parastatals.
What must emerge from this Action Agenda, however, is a clear sense from all in the transport sector that the responsibility for its implementation does not lie solely with government. I have given you a basic outline today of what we are doing.
There will always be new challenges that will confront us. For example, Moving South Africa has not taken full stock of what the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic will have on the Transport sector. The Department is currently collecting information to factor this into our planning in the future.
I have made it clear - both here today and in the Action Agenda - that government is committed to act as overall custodian of the strategy.
This means that it will act and intervene decisively insofar as it is necessary to set and articulate the vision, set the playing field and provide the rules of the game.
For the rest, we will be playing the role of facilitator, enabler, cajoler - at times even the role of "opstooker".
We will, however, always play these roles in responsible partnership with the transport industry, with customers, with transport workers and with supporting industries and institutions, including finance houses, technology suppliers and the providers of re search and development, education and training.
To provide a focus for this partnership, the Department of Transport will create a permanent forum which we will call the "Partnership for Moving South Africa".
This forum will be made up of the highest levels of leadership from organised labour, business, customers and government to advise the Minister on the unfolding of this Action Agenda, and to monitor, guide and drive the programme of implementation.
Its mandate will be to ensure that the Action Agenda is translated into targeted actions and delivery mechanisms which cover the whole spectrum of the transport system and meets the key goals we have set.
We have spelt it out in our Business Plan, and I repeat it again today: Our energy and focus has moved from policy and transformation to action and delivery.
My Department is now on the campaign trail carrying the message of Moving South Africa across government, amongst all our customers and throughout the transport industry.
Thank you.
Issued by Didi Moyle: PA and Media Liaison Officer to the Minister of Transport