Hon Chairperson, hon Minister Sibusiso Ndebele, hon Deputy Minister Jeremy Cronin, hon members, ladies and gentlemen, the ANC supports the budget. [Applause.] We congratulate the Department of Transport on receiving an unqualified audit report for the fifth consecutive time.
We provide oversight on 12 transport entities. Ten of them received clean audit reports and we are proud of that. The Road Traffic Management Corporation, RTMC, received an adverse audit report and the Road Traffic Infringement Agency, RTIA, received a disclaimer. We have engaged with our ailing transport entities to try to understand - listen, hon De Freitas - the root causes of their situation, so that we can work together with them in finding solutions, instead of dealing with the symptoms of the challenges.
We are happy to report that it is possible to turn this situation around and have all our entities receive clean audit reports. We have identified the National Land Transport Act of 2009, the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences Act of 1998 and the Road Traffic Management Act of 1998 as the root causes of the challenges that both the RTMC and the RTIA experience in the process of implementing their mandates and Aarto, in particular. We deal with the root causes, not the symptoms.
The Portfolio Committee on Transport and the Department of Transport concur with both the RTMC and RTIA on the need to amend these three pieces of legislation and create an environment conducive to these bodies executing their mandate effectively.
I have been tasked by the ANC study group on transport to speak about the connection between transport and community development and how that relates to sustainable development processes as a central pillar for building a developmental state. I am going to focus on three modes of transport, that is road, rail and maritime transport.
The transformation process began in 1994 when the ANC-led government took over power and inherited a disintegrated transport system designed along apartheid land use and settlement patterns. We inherited a decaying transport system not designed to serve the developmental needs of the country. The transportation of goods, over and above the transportation of people, was prioritised. Railway lines were linked to townships and hostels in order to transport people from these areas to industrial parks in big cities. Passenger trains were scheduled to bring workers to cities in the morning and take them back to far away townships and hostels in the afternoon. The railway technology we inherited was designed in the 1950s. The apartheid government had last invested in railway lines in the 1950s. Train coaches were last purchased 33 years ago.
In 1993, at the dawn of our democracy, the then South African government decided to sell a fleet of 57 ships, resulting in a South Africa that does not participate in maritime transportation, yet has the longest coastline on the African continent and owns sea land that is three times the size of South Africa. [Applause.] What I have covered relates to a transport system that is not strategically positioned to develop communities.
Since 1994, we have started with the process of transformation and have managed to turn the situation around. We established a number of transport entities and continue to position the Department of Transport as being central to unlocking the developmental potential of underdeveloped communities on the one hand and furthering the growth of developed communities on the other.
We want to single out three transport entities to illustrate how transport can affect social and economic development if used for purposes of community development. These are the Passenger Rail Agency of SA, Prasa, the SA Maritime Safety Authority, Samsa, and the SA National Roads Agency Limited, Sanral. Prasa and Samsa have gained a better understanding of the connection between transport and community development, while Sanral is lagging behind. Samsa is mandated to provide safety services to our seas and ships that use our seas. We spend R37 billion per annum on that. The chief executive officer of Samsa has used the investment in maritime studies made in him by the ANC - he is actually a cadre - to think out of the box and develop a maritime development strategy. [Applause.] That strategy has the potential to create 405 000 jobs in the maritime industry between 2012 and 2022.
The maritime industry development strategy developed by Samsa creates opportunities for the reopening of the shipyards and the building of ships in South Africa. It is a strategy that would focus on both the Department of Basic Education and the Department of Higher Education and Training in maritime studies, in order to produce skills required to take advantage of the 405 000 jobs in the maritime industry.
The ANC supports this line of thinking, as well as the efforts made by Samsa in raising awareness of the political leadership on all economic opportunities in the maritime industry and the potential this country has. The maritime industry development strategy demonstrates the connection between transport and community development. The ANC will use its influence and its majority in the portfolio committee and Parliament to have this strategy adopted.
In the state of the nation address, the President, Mr Jacob Zuma, stated that the ANC-led government has committed itself to seriously investing in infrastructure and transport development. Prasa and Transnet are hard at work to improve railway transportation in our country. Prasa will use, over 20 years, R123 billion to build 7 224 metro coaches and create 65 000 jobs.
The long-term objective is that 65% of trains will be produced locally, in South Africa. [Applause.] The strategy developed by Prasa and shared by Transnet creates opportunities for South Africa to translate Nepad into practical action, and to relate to the indigenisation and economic policy of the government of Zimbabwe and the Southern African Development Community region in terms of using mineral resources in Africa for local beneficiation.
Prasa needs three years to facilitate the establishment of manufacturing plants in South Africa. There is also a need to produce the required engineering skills so as to take advantage of job opportunities in railway transportation. We know that our people are patient when they understand what will be achieved in the end. They waited 82 years for their liberation.
Prasa presented a railway transportation transformation strategy to the Portfolio Committee on Transport that is developmental in the sense that it addresses the transportation needs of the people. It is balanced in the sense that it allows for the increasing of the travelling speed of our trains from 80 kilometres to 250 kilometres per hour on the existing railway lines. It also introduces new high-speed trains at 270 km to 430 km per hour. It links railway lines to airports and opens new corridors and economic hubs.
Prasa has taken the programme of developing co-operatives more seriously and developed a strategy that opens the market to developing co-operatives in railway transportation, focusing on the cleaning of train stations and organising hawkers at train stations to form themselves into co-operatives. Prasa wants to unlock the value of rail properties to create economic hubs, build its financial capacity and use that capacity to fund railway transportation needs going forward.
Prasa is not talking about borrowing, relying forever on government funding and depending on other countries for the supply of skills and technology. To us, a developmental approach is building your own capacity and making use of your own resources for your own benefit. Prasa has identified the need for railway policy development. We concur with Prasa on that.
Sanral has had many challenges, to the extent that such challenges overwhelm the good work that Sanral has done in South Africa. Sanral has also suffered as a result of a mandate this Parliament gave to it, through Act 7 of 1998, in terms of which this House mandated Sanral to build national roads using state money for non-toll roads and borrowed money for toll roads. We need to review the mandate of Sanral to make Sanral more developmental. A lot of noise is being made about e-tolling, a system of collecting money from road users. What is not being said is what exactly is wrong with the system. What is wrong is that, 18 years into democracy, South Africa should have developed its own technology to collect the fees, instead of using technology that comes from another country at a high cost. That is what is wrong.
Who decided on the technology? It is the companies that invested in the project together with Sanral, including Kopano Ke Matla, an investment arm of Cosatu. [Interjections.] [Applause.] If the technology is wrong, those who benefited from the project in terms of profits, including Cosatu, should, in solidarity with ordinary citizens, return the profits they made out of the project. The government has made its own contribution. It is high time that we focus on development and use our efforts to correct what is wrong and stop making a noise. [Interjections.] The ANC supports this budget ...