JUSTICE MALALA | The Gautrain is a shining example of what we are capable of

South Africa is replete with examples of excellence. They are everywhere. If we increased them, we could become a sea of excellence with just a few islands of mediocrity and corruption. If we replicated them, we would be a champion nation, not a country of also-rans, of poverty and crime and corruption.

A centre of excellence, for nearly two decades, has been the Gautrain. Last week I used the train from Hatfield in Tshwane to Rosebank, Joburg. What a joy. What a pleasure. What an experience. In a country where the mood is so negative (RMB/BER business confidence index slipped two points to 31 this week, with car dealerships saying their mood is lowest since the height of the Covid-19 pandemic), where the behaviour of some of our leaders is so cynical and nihilistic, you get onto the Gautrain and you want to break into song. You want to shout: “It works, and it works beautifully!”

The Gautrain is a multibillion-rand initiative that was dreamt up by Mbhazima “Sam” Shilowa and his provincial cabinet when he was premier of Gauteng in the late 1990s. They steered the entire project to fruition with little corruption. It was lambasted in some circles as being a transport solution for the rich, and that may perhaps be true in some ways, but it was done and launched efficiently and most of the station sites have directly or indirectly created hundreds of thousands of jobs, residential areas, shopping centres, and a host of economic activity.

All those things mean nothing when you are a traveller. It is the experience of being on a bus or a plane that matters. I am blessed to have travelled a fair bit across the globe and there are simple yet crucial things that make for a joyous journey. The key is safety, cleanliness and affordability.

I applaud the Gautrain today because it is an example of what we can achieve as a country in partnerships between the government and the public sector.

You walk into a Gautrain station and the first thing you notice is that it is clean. We don’t make enough noise about this in SA. Our public parks, our city streets, are full of litter and are not kept clean. The Joburg city centre started sagging and dying when littering was allowed to run rampant. Dirty spaces are a sign of disrespect for oneself and one’s fellow human beings and we need to constantly call it out. It is also a health hazard, pure and simple. At the Gautrain the guards see a piece of dirt and they quickly clean it up. The passengers don’t litter.

Now, this is a very uncomfortable issue. It should not be. People don’t litter at Gautrain stations because there are so many guards in the stations and they are quick to call those who litter out. An ecosystem of responsibility has been established. Women don’t get harassed on the Gautrain because there is a guard that women can call on if someone is acting in a predatory fashion. I wasn’t sure whether to get off at Sandton, so I asked someone, and they gave me a helpful answer. You don’t find that at many government departments, where civil servants seem to think their jobs are to go to lunch, shout at poor people, or announce that the computer is offline.

A system of guards is not foolproof, of course. As we know with the corrupt metro cop system in SA, you can have hundreds of guards on Joburg’s streets, but they do not guarantee safety as they are too busy taking bribes. However, if the system ensures accountability, then you are on to a good wicket. A guard at the Gautrain can’t let you on the train if you slip him or her a R20 because there is someone checking for tickets on the train, and you also have to check out on the other end. A metro cop at a roadblock on Jan Smuts Avenue, however, has no guardrails and feels emboldened to ask for a bribe because no-one is watching him. Now, imagine if he had a body camera on him. That would cut out a lot (not all) of corruption.

Finally, the Gautrain is reliable, trudging along efficiently without delay most of the time. We should be proud of this product of a great partnership between the Gauteng government of the time and the private sector. It works. I understand that in 2026 it will be expanded. May it be saved from the corruption that is so endemic in our country today.

I applaud the Gautrain today because it is an example of what we can achieve as a country in partnerships between the government and the public sector. President Ramaphosa made co-operation between the public sector and business a cornerstone of his administration. The Gautrain is an excellent example of such co-operation. We could be so far ahead as a country if we did the small things (cleaning our environments) and the big things (coming up with visionary projects) that the Gautrain has achieved.