TOM EATON | Cele’s train of thought is hard to follow but he assures us he’s hot on the trail of the arsonists

Bheki Cele isn’t sure whether the current spate of arson attacks on trucks in three provinces is a squabble among trucking mafias, an attack on the state or just a robust celebration of the two-year anniversary of the 2021 riots. But he can assure us that the perps will be found and everything will go back to normal. Which is a terrible, terrible idea. 

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that the firebombing of trucks in Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo is a good idea. But I would argue that as we call on Cele’s security apparatus to return the status quo, it might be useful to reflect on what that actually means.

A couple of weeks ago I was startled by one particular claim in a short essay written by Songezo Zibi, the leader of the newly formed RISE Mzansi movement.

Minibus taxis, he wrote, are not public transport.   

For a moment it seemed like a crazy thing to suggest. But of course, like many of us, I had forgotten what public transport actually is: a large, safe and reliable transport network, run and subsided by the state and therefore affordable to the vast majority of citizens.

Of course, it’s in the interests of the ANC to present our current and almost total dependency on private trucking firms as normal. For some in the ruling party, it’s an excuse to continue to do nothing about fixing our disgraceful rail infrastructure.

Zibi is entirely correct: taxis may transport the South African public but they are not public transport. Rather, they are the cash registers of a private, for-profit, largely unregulated industry with too many links to organised crime. 

This week, as trucks started to burn around the country, the message coming from the state’s security cluster was clear: the torching of trucks was bad because it affects the economy and might even qualify as an attack on the state. The inverse implication was equally clear: when trucks are not being burned on South African roads, then the state is fulfilling its duty to help the economy run as smoothly as it can.

But as Zibi reminded me, this simply isn’t true; because while nobody should be firebombing trucks, 80% of those trucks shouldn’t be on our roads in the first place. Instead, the goods they’re transporting should be travelling on an efficient, state-run railway network at a fraction of the cost of lugging them by road.

Of course, it’s in the interests of the ANC to present our current and almost total dependency on private trucking firms as normal. 

For some in the ruling party, it’s an excuse to continue to do nothing about fixing our disgraceful rail infrastructure. For others, who are politically or financially invested in legitimate logistics firms or trucking mafias, the benefits are even more obvious.

Over the next few days Cele and his team will say all sorts of macho and decisive things before they gently usher the whole issue into the fact-free, consequence-free void where the 2021 insurrection went.

We will be asked to believe that because the trucks are rolling generally unmolested, it’s back to business as usual.

But until the trains are rolling, too, and in much higher numbers than the trucks, business as usual is the last thing our economy needs. 

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