Life Tip: Never sail an Optimist Dinghy against an America’s Cup Yacht and expect to win!
The long slide of SOE Transnet into what most are calling a ‘collapse’ started many years ago when a number of State Owned Companies were combined into the behemoth that we now call Transnet.
With the advent of democracy politicians began looking critically at the make up of the many SOE’s at the time and combined Rails, Ports, Engineering, Pipeline and Property to fall under the umbrella of Transnet.
The Company’s Memorandum of Incorporation (MOI) was approved by the Shareholder Minister on 25 June 2013 and six divisions were given official status:
- Transnet Freight Rail (TFR)
- Transnet National Ports Authority (TNPA)
- Transnet Port Terminals (TPT)
- Transnet Engineering (TE)
- Transnet Pipelines (TPL)
- Transnet Property (TP)
With extensive experience on the way that the SOE runs it’s property division I can only say that the writing was on the wall from the day that Transnet Property was birthed. This is my OPINION of what went wrong – fixing it will take someone with a huge personality and ability to mend fences, maybe whoever fixes the Israel/Palestine mess can then come on down to South Africa and give us a hand!
As the Commodore of the Algoa Bay Yacht Club from 2014 I stepped into a role that was a minefield of combat between previous committees, Port Managers and Transnet Property.
Admittedly the manner in which negotiations had begun were, frankly, bordering on the insulting from the side of the client (ABYC). With hindsight one can expect that such a knee jerk reaction was to be expected considering that the ABYC had been presented with a bill for over R50 000 per month after paying an initial R150.00 per year for land and water – starting in the 1950’s. Remember that ABYC had, since inception, developed the land, built a club, reclaimed land, constructed a hard and slipway, established a floating marina and rebuolt the club after a devastating fire – all from private subscriptions.
Through their efforts ABYC turned a dirty unused section of the harbour into an attraction point and were joined by the NSRI and PEDSAC offering recreation and leisure boating facilities for the City of Nelson Mandela Bay.
The attitude from TNPA was “take it or vacate” and negotiations became quite heated as we fought a losing battle over 5 long years of negotiations. As the ABYC lawyer, Gerald Friedman, pointed out to me; “Alan, TNPA has more money than ABYC and, if the want you out they will get you out eventually.” Gerald did a sterling job holding off the demon from the door whilst we negotiated and amassed a war chest to go to war with.
But, it was always an unequal war – myself and Sean Wiseman would attend sessions at the Port Regulator where we would be ALONE representing ABYC whilst the TNPA would have 6 Advocates in the room. A bit like sailing an Optimist Dinghy against an America’s Cup Yacht and expecting to have a chance at victory.
Whilst we were fighting this unjust war – other tenants in the Transnet Proerty stable were also being pushed hard to pay ‘market related’ rentals – many left, many sucked it up and paid and many were forced to leave their legacy behind.
On a micro local scale:
- We have seen the Port of Port Elizabeth descend even further into a dirty, sad place struggling to survive and hold on to the only major profit center – the Manganese Ore.
- Very few people enter the harbour to enjoy the ambience and facilities.
- The dream of a waterfront fades daily.
- Our cities roads are filthy and potholed.
- Neighbouring properties are going black with Manganese Ore Dust.
- The Port of Port Elizabeth is most definitely not a location of choice for developers or prospective tenants.
- Entrance to the harbour has become once again an unpleasant experience.
Where am I going with this?
- The combative, entitled attitudes from Transnet Property has resulted in lots of negative feeling towards Transnet as a whole, the ABYC experience has chased many potential investors away.
- No international yachts call here in numbers anymore – losing revenue for TNPA and the City.
- No Yacht Club clubhouse in the harbour has deprived the much depeleted Sailing Gqeberha Yacht Club of social members. Social members are the lifeblood of any Yacht Club as they are roped in to support regattas and big events.
- No regattas and big events have deprived the City of foreign cash inflows – A global yachting event is capable of contributing R600-800 Million to a local economy. ABYC used to hold National regattas bringing sailors to the city for extended stays.
Now – take the above and multiply the effect across all manner of tenants in the South African Ports that supported sporting activities and presented a friendly face to tourists along with silently marketing the services in each Port. That is all lost and will take decades to get back for TNPA.
At the end of the day – the application of demanding a ‘commercial rental’ from sporting bodies that were forced into running bars and restaurants ‘just to survive’ had an incredibly negative blowback for TNPA.
Now that the proverbial is still spraying out of the fan one has low hopes of a major turnaround in attitude and policy.
