Latest news with #Sasco
The Citizen
4 days ago
- Business
- The Citizen
Barely able to run ports, state pushes for national shipping company
Development Bank of Southern Africa, one of the few relatively well-functioning state-owned enterprises, is playing a key role in this. The government owned Safmarine for over 50 years – and imports and exports do not depend on whether SA has a national shipping carrier. Picture: Shutterstock It really is preposterous, isn't it? A government that wants to establish a new state-owned shipping company, but whose navy has little to no working ships and whose air force has little to no working aircraft. Thankfully, government is – as it does – moving forward so unhurriedly that we may not see final legislation to create a new state-owned shipping company by the early 2030s. The process to establish the unimaginatively named South African Shipping Company (Sasco) began in 2017 with the publication of the Comprehensive Maritime Transport Policy, under then minister of transport Joe Maswanganyi. In 2022, a pre-draft bill regarding Sasco's establishment was published by the then minister of transport Fikile Mbalula. It took a further three years after that for the department to start engaging stakeholders. Read more Budget 2024: No new bailouts for underperforming SOEs Recently, it invited industry role players to participate in a steering committee to help guide its development. The Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), one of the few relatively well-functioning state-owned enterprises, is playing a key role in this process. ALSO READ: Development Bank of Southern Africa 'is bullish' 'Own import and export trade' 'In particular,' the department says, the state will 'implement radical measures' and intends to ensure 'a significant targeted percentage of exports and imports are moved by the national shipping carrier'. It says the company model 'will enable South Africa to carry its own import and export trade which has suffered a negative growth since the 1980s since South Africa does not have a national shipping carrier'. Not only is this factually incorrect (we had a state-owned shipping company until 1999), it also simply makes no sense. The government owned Safmarine for over 50 years, but it was sold to global shipping giant Maersk at the end of the 1990s, which integrated it into the group in the 2000s. Maersk dropped the brand in 2020. Imports and exports do not depend on whether South Africa has a national shipping carrier. In fact, regulations that restrict cabotage, or the transporting of goods between two ports within the same country, may well negatively impact trade volumes. The policy sees a phasing in of cabotage restrictions, a targeted increase in domestic/state-owned vessels, and legislation on the carriage of government cargo by South African ships. ALSO READ: New minister of transport's five targets a clear and encouraging vision Even Ethiopia has a fleet … As far back as 2013, when Durban hosted the Brics Maritime Trade Forum, government appeared to realise that we were the only of the five founding members of Brics not to own a fleet of vessels. It highlighted that even Ethiopia had a state-owned fleet. Speaking to SAfm Market Update with Moneyweb, transport economist Dr Joachim Vermooten explained that: 'The international shipping industry is a very, very large industry, and it operates similarly to other network industries where you get economies of scope and scale. 'Now, with [just] a few ships you can't get any economic leverage to actually do that – and ultimately it would mean that you would end up with higher shipping rates because it increases the empty directional operations by ships. 'So, I think, you know, under the current economic situation there is no room for actually starting up a state-owned shipping company because we just can't generate the types of volumes to actually make it work. 'And that's why Safmarine was eventually sold to Maersk, which is a very, very large organisation. And before it was absorbed into Maersk itself, the company grew, I think, seven or eight times larger than it had been under the auspices of government ownership.' ALSO READ: Creecy 'very concerned' about Air Traffic Navigation Services woes Won't compete effectively That sums up the problem perfectly. A fleet of five, 10 or even a few dozen ships just won't be enough to be able to compete effectively. Thankfully, The Presidency knows that shipping is a network industry. That's part of the reason why it's rammed through reforms to introduce private sector players into Transnet's underperforming ports. The policy ideologues at the Department of Transport, however, don't seem to get this. Vermooten also says cabotage, which comes from 16th Century France, was adopted across Europe to reserve port-to-port operations for shipping lines run by each country. This principle has been relaxed totally for those within the EEC [European Economic Community]. He adds that 'South Africa's waters are not very conducive to this type of operation'. 'Practically, I think it would be wrong for us to apply a cabotage. We don't have the shipping, we don't have the routes that operate, and our land transportation is so good with trucks in various forms that it's very difficult to think that there are any routes along the coast that can actually financially sustain a shipping route.' ALSO READ: How to fix Transnet's ports in the interest of economic growth 'Billions will be spent' The overarching problem with the bureaucracy in national government (in particular), is that once a process like this starts, it's very, very difficult to stop. The train has left the station. And so the state will inch forward, slowly, and finally yet another state-owned enterprise will be established, complete with funding, a corporate structure (including board seats that must be filled), and staff. By that point, it likely won't own a single ship, but tens/hundreds of millions will have been spent to get there. Once it starts amassing a fleet (even of a single ship), that's where billions and billions will be spent. A cynical view might be that the DBSA is only involved as the fiscus has no money to fund Sasco. But that's the reality. This article was republished from Moneyweb. Read the original here.
Daily Maverick
03-06-2025
- General
- Daily Maverick
From protest to policy — how to prepare student leaders for governance roles
Leadership development begins in childhood and is either matured or sabotaged in early adulthood. What surfaces later in public life is merely the ripple effect of how young leaders were shaped, or not shaped, in those formative years. The impact is seen in everything from government, to corporates and civil society formations. Nowhere is this more evident than in the corridors of tertiary institutions, where student leaders often find themselves catapulted from protest to policy proponents without a roadmap. South Africa's Higher Education Act affirms the importance of the student voice, through the establishment of student representative councils. These structures are meant to form part of university governance, giving legitimacy to student participation and co-ownership of institutional decisions. However, a troubling paradox lies hidden in plain sight. The students who are elected to lead are often those who have risen through the fiery furnace of very essential campus activism. They are politicised, energised and popular – but are they prepared to govern? That is the dilemma. Passion without preparation. Power without posture. Protest without bureaucratic policy insight. Student organisations across campuses – whether aligned to Sasco, Pasma, Daso, the EFFSC or others – reflect our nation's fractured political landscape. Their members fight hard for electoral visibility. But when the protests are over, when the slogans fade and the victory photos are taken, what follows is an often painful transition – moving overnight from activist to structural representative. And too often, it fails. Students find themselves suddenly required to operate in the very spaces they previously vilified. Instead of megaphones and placards, they now face committee rooms, university statutes and boardroom coffee. As one student leader admitted during a capacity-building session: 'You sit there drinking coffee with management, and you've got a lump in your throat because you know your people outside don't trust this table.' This isn't just political tension. It's a deep psychological rupture – one not confined to student leadership but familiar in many transitions of power. It shows up when trade unionists ascend to corporate boards. When activists become ministers. When freedom fighters become cabinet politicians. This is possibly the case also when a country moves from revolutionary struggle to diplomatic status at the United Nations. The transition from outsider to insider is complex, and if mishandled, corrosive – both to the soul of the individual and to institutional systems. The leadership bottleneck becomes clear: student leaders, once driven by mobilisation and moral fire, now face institutional processes they neither understand nor control. Their term of office is punitively short. Their learning curve is steep. The same voices that carried weight on the picket line are now weighed against policy cycles, academic calendars and budget meetings. Decisions on exclusions, accommodation or financial aid don't move at protest speed. They move at the pace of bureaucracy. This mismatch between urgency and process often creates a crisis of identity. Many student leaders, untrained in governance and under pressure to remain 'relevant', begin to perform rather than lead. They attend to operational issues – responding to every complaint, attending every event – not because it is strategic, but because it is visible. They believe leadership is about being seen. And being seen means votes. In the absence of strategic tools, some regress into dangerous patterns. They use the student body as leverage, sometimes impulsively and very often manipulatively. They stage unrest to regain relevance. They conflate outrage with influence. But what began as representation quietly morphs into exploitation. The consequences can be devastating. Protests escalate. Trust erodes. Institutional governance becomes fragile. Millions are lost in property damage. Students face disciplinary hearings or arrests. Some drop out. Some are maimed. Many student leaders themselves leave office bitter, disillusioned or psycho-spiritually broken. Their passion was pure, but the system gave them no scaffolding. But there is another way. It begins not with slogans or elections, but with structure. With strategy. With formation. The Early Adulthood Development Foundation (EADF) proposes a new pathway. We propose a reimagined pipeline for student leadership formation. One that prepares the next generation not just to protest, but to govern. Not just to lead a chant, but to lead a council. The first pivot is this: From performance to formation. Leadership is not a stage. It is a calling which requires self-mastery and not just public appeal. Training must begin before elections and continue long after the term begins. We must invest in deep personal formation, not reactive workshops. Second: From popularity to credibility. We need leaders who are trusted, not just followed. Who are respected for their integrity, not just their volume. This requires political literacy, strategic maturity and ethical clarity. The student body on campus must stop rewarding visibility without sustainable vision. And third: From protest to policy. Activism should not die when office begins. It should evolve. Protest must give birth to policy. Student leaders should be equipped to translate the pain they've seen into the policies they propose. That means knowing how systems work, how power flows and how decisions are made. This is where the proposed EADF scaffolds come in. They are simple, but transformative: Structured pre-election training to lay the foundation; Baseline entry assessments to identify maturity gaps; A leadership eligibility pipeline that ensures experience before elevation; and Consistent mentorship and coaching throughout the term. These are not luxuries. They are real necessities, if we are serious about cultivating ethical and effective leadership for the next generation. From churches and corporates, to governments and NGOs, crisis always mirrors character. The tertiary education sector is not just a space for academic growth. It offers a sacred potential rehearsal environment for public life. If we form leaders who can stand with conscience and insight in the boardroom, kneel with compassion in their dorm rooms and lead with temperate foresight in protest, then we are not just shaping student politics, we are safeguarding the future of leadership itself. DM Tebogo Mothibinyane is a student development practitioner. Professor Cecil Bodibe is a clinical psychologist and past DVC student at Unisa. Dr Zolile Mlisana is a paediatrician and past principal of Medunsa.
