(Western Cape): Thank you, Chair, and also thank you to the Whippery for allowing me to move my position; otherwise I would be in some trouble in the Other Place. It's an important privilege to be allowed to address you on this subject and also to be here with my hon national Minister. I do want to go to the heart of these kinds of problems. This is Transport Month. Hon Jacobs was speaking, and I am going to be just a little naughty with something he said. He said, "If you travel on the train, you can take a nap." I want to tell you it is impossible to take a nap if you catch a train from Khayelitsha to Cape Town or from Mabopane to Pretoria, because you are standing up, you are squeezed, you are late and you are travelling in circumstances that are an offence to your human dignity.
That is really where I want to focus the discussion, because this is an issue that transcends party-political divides. It's got nothing to do with party-political divides. It's about hard decisions that we as a nation have to make.
Let me say this. When we think of public transport, we should think first of those people who have no alternative but public transport. There are many other people that we think of in addition to these, in regard to public transport. How can we get Mr Smith out of his car and into the train or the bus? Yes, that's important! But what is really important are the people who live in the southeast of Cape Town, who have no alternative but the train or the taxi or the bus. They must be our first responsibility and our public transport system must first be a people's public transport system. That has to be the key priority. That is the argument, and I want to use this opportunity, which is a very special one for me, to speak to all nine provinces. I really want to try to convince you that our first responsibility - and it's not an easy responsibility, as I will spell out in a moment - must be a people's public transport service. It doesn't have to be very fancy, but it has to have those things that are important.
Tomorrow I will be travelling in to work from Kuyasa, and I do this frequently. I talk to the people on the train, when you can get near them. You know, those trains are so overcrowded. The hon Minister has made reference to this. In fact, he said in this very place some months ago:
Unless we invest heavily in those trains, in Metrorail, there will be no train service in any city in South Africa in the next 10 years.
We must take heed of those words, and I'm going to come to them.
When you ask people, they say, first of all, the two things that they need most from trains are safety and predictability. That is, not just safety on the trains or on the buses, but safety getting to the transport interchange and going from their destination to their work, and then going back home again afterwards. So, it is not just safety on public transport, but also getting to it. Secondly, transport should be predictable, so that we should not have a situation as we have in Cape Town, as we have in Tshwane, and as we have elsewhere, where the vast majority of people coming to work by public transport are late each day and it's not their fault. So, it must be predictable, it must be on time and it must be safe.
We need also to remember that because we have upside-down cities created by apartheid, where the poor and those most in need of transport most often live furthest from the city centre or from the places of work, we have a particular problem in this regard. This is really where I seek to gain support for a hard decision from the National Council of Provinces.
The hon Minister has spoken, as have many others, about the success of the Gautrain, and the intention to replicate the Gautrain, perhaps from Johannesburg to Durban, or whatever the case may be.
The hon Minister has spoken about his deep concerns about the roads and the necessity to create a road fund on which we can draw. The hon Minister has also spoken of his deep concerns about Metrorail. At the same time periphery roads are being built, particularly in Gauteng, at a cost of over R65 billion. These roads will be tolled but at the end of the day someone has to pay for them.
Then there is long-distance rail. We would like to see a lot of money going into that. Also, the bus rapid transit, BRT, system, this one here - which has not been without its difficulties - will cost us R5 billion by the time it is finished.
The hard decision that we have to face as a nation is that while all of this is happening tax revenues are dropping like that, and social network requirements are rising. The simple fact of the matter is that we cannot afford all those good things. We can only afford some of those good things. The hard decision we have to make as a nation is: Which good things can we afford, and which can we not afford at this time? Maybe sometime in the future, when we have a growth rate of 15%, like China, or 8%, like India, we can afford them then, but there are some things we cannot afford now.
What I am terrified of is that we will invest in luxuries and neglect the people's public transport. Taking this opportunity of speaking, as I say, across the nation, which is one I have very seldom, I want to ask you this, also looking at your own constituencies, wherever they may be. What decision do we, as the decision-makers of South Africa, have to come to? What is the order in which we put these things? I want to suggest to you that there are two things that come above all others.
I want to suggest this to you by way of a true story from the Tyhume Valley. In the Tyhume Valley there were once three great educational institutions, where many of the great struggle leaders were educated, and where there was prosperous farming. Now there is only one left. A friend of mine, who is anxious to get farming going again in the Tyhume Valley, and who is looking at the possibility of fragrances, in speaking to the local people there said, "We can do this. We can find funds for this." And they said to him, "You can find as much funding as you like, but in the Tyhume Valley a bakkie won't last longer than six months, and you cannot farm without a bakkie."
I tell you this little story because, unless we can keep our roads usable, what is true of the Tyhume Valley and of Alice is true of the whole country. We must be able to maintain our roads. We need the money to maintain our roads, and the will to maintain our roads must be very high.
The second thing is that we have to reinvest in Metrorail. In my province, you cannot operate the people's public transport without Metrorail. You can build BRTs till they come out of your ears, but you cannot operate this city of 3,5 million people without Metrorail. The same, to a great extent, is true in Johannesburg and Tshwane.
We have to rebuild Metrorail. Its coaches are so old that they are worse than the "amaphela" [sedan cars that operate as taxis in the townships]. Believe me, they are worse than the "amaphela". There has been no significant investment in Metrorail for nearly 40 years.
So, in closing, Mr Chairman, my appeal to the provinces is this. Let us look hard at how the nation spends its money. Let us ensure, before it spends it on anything else in the transport field, that it spends it first on the people's public transport and on the people's roads. [Applause.]
Mr T M KAUNDA (KwaZulu-Natal): Chairperson, hon Minister and hon members, KwaZulu-Natal, KZN, would like to extend a special word of gratitude to the national Department of Transport led by hon Mr Sibusiso Ndebele for deciding to launch the national Transport Month on 27 September 2010 in our province.
The Minister and his provincial counterpart, KZN MEC for Transport, hon Willies Mchunu, led a tour of the Inanda, Ntuzuma and KwaMashu, INK, programme's underground railway station to mark the launch of Transport Month at Bridge City in KwaMashu. The Minister has rightly emphasised the importance of rail as a key part of our transport plans into the future. We are in agreement that rail remains a pillar of our strategy towards safer roads and the reduction of crashes on our roads. The Minister has also announced that a railway-public transport link is on the cards. This project will link Durban and Johannesburg as one of the busiest corridors in South Africa. This will indeed improve the quality of our public transport.
We are also in agreement that rail is a key part of our strategy to reduce transport-related emissions into the environment, as well as to reduce our country's carbon footprint. Rail is a key part of preparing our country for this inevitable reduction and an end to fossil fuels, for which the world is also preparing.
During the national launch of Transport Month we as a province pledged ourselves to support all the programmes brought to us by the national Department of Transport. We also appreciated the fact that the Minister officiated at the opening of Transport Month three days before the start of the actual Transport Month, which gave us an opportunity to subsequently have our own provincial launch in Durban on 30 September 2010. We have since had a strong focus on all areas pertaining to transportation, namely the user, the operator and the infrastructure, with a strong emphasis on road safety.
The province of KwaZulu-Natal has experienced an increase in the number of fatalities on our roads during the past few months up until this past weekend, which saw 19 people dying in one incident. With the festive season around the corner, some drastic measures have had to be taken. To this end, we have developed a framework which has provided an opportunity to show renewed direction on ways to achieve increased road safety outcomes and advocate a shared responsibility for road safety among all stakeholders, including government, business and society at large.
We realised that changing the road use culture might take time, and some changes are not possible without the active co-operation of multiple sectors. Hence, we have committed ourselves to creating a safe road environment by reducing road fatalities by 5% a year between 2010 and 2015. We have planned interventions in accordance with the five E's, that is Education, Enforcement, Engineering, Encouragement and Evaluation.
Each of the three spheres of government has responsibilities in respect of the five E's on their own road networks in KZN. Each one also has functions that impact on the road networks of other spheres of government. Because of this, close co-operation is required between all spheres of government to achieve the goals set for the reduction of accidents through improved engineering that is informed by effective consultation between the province and local governments. The sharing of road development planning and engineering expertise can only be meaningful if there is proper consultation and collaboration.
The KZN department of transport will develop and implement programmes for improving the driving skills of new and existing drivers. Role models are emerging among truck and taxi drivers, thanks to the national driver contests which are spearheaded by the national Department of Transport and the Road Traffic Management Corporation, RTMC, as well as the provinces. We are scheduled to introduce a pilot project which will be run at selected testing stations, whereby persons who have just obtained their driving licences will be subjected to a mandatory road safety session focusing on basic road safety rules.
In support of the 1 Million Vehicle campaign initiated by the national Department of Transport, KwaZulu-Natal has a target of 170 000 vehicles and drivers to be stopped. Between 1 and 21 October the province's statistics were as follows: the number of vehicles stopped was 110 155; the number of drivers tested for alcohol was 88 698; the number of drivers without driving licences was 1 364; the statistic for inconsiderate driving was 27; the number of vehicles without a licence was 790; there were 15 307 written charges; there were 20 drunk drivers; the number of vehicles that were suspended was 504; and there were 9 speed arrests.
Other than the road safety campaigns, during the month of October the KZN department of transport engaged in numerous activities in various communities in the province. These activities confirm the commitment by our government to see future economic growth through efficiency in the transport sector.
We have always assured our people - even before the 2010 Fifa World Cup - that whilst our focus was more on 2010 and beyond and despite being adversely affected by the recession, we would not cut costs to the detriment of the people of our province. We have continued to provide transport infrastructure, particularly to our rural communities, against all odds. Some roads and bridges that have been completed are being handed over to the communities during this Transport Month. From 1 October to date we have officially handed over five road infrastructure projects to the value of R314 million.
We are happy that, in line with our policy, the construction costs of these projects always remain an economic benefit to the local communities, where contractors source all materials from the area and employ all available artisans, as well as labour, from the nearby communities, using labour- intensive methods in the interests of job creation. On completion, local roads are maintained by our Zibambele road maintenance programme, which is an exemplary part of the national Expanded Public Works Programme, as it is renowned for creating work opportunities for the poorest of the poor, that is households where there is no food to put on the table, and no money for school fees - ikati lilele eziko [poverty-stricken].
Allow me to conclude by thanking you for this opportunity to share with you our province's challenges and achievements. The KwaZulu-Natal department of transport, with its minimal funding - we must note, Chairperson, that we require more funds to deal with the backlog that is there still - is committed to creating a safe and reliable transport system throughout the province. I thank you. [Applause.]