WeeklySA_AdminOPINION: By depriving the parastatal of funding, the government is breaking the country’s economic spine. Every track and signal unrepaired is a bone gnawed, a marrow lost…
By Themba Khumalo
If you think this country is merely struggling, think again. It is being slowly, deliberately strangled — not by enemies, not by sanctions, not by war, but by its own hands, its own policies, its own refusal to face reality.
We are not standing at the edge of a crisis. We are already in its jaws: ribs cracking, breath crushed, the taste of collapse already on our tongues.
If you are not seated at the table, you are not dining — you are dinner. You are not part of the conversation; you are the subject. Decisions are being carved, power is being portioned, futures are being sliced and served — and you are lying on the platter, stripped of voice, agency, dignity, waiting to be consumed by those who arrived prepared to feast.
The above should strike our government like a hammer to the skull. Instead, it drifts past our leaders like smoke curling through a burning building while they stand admiring the wallpaper. The world is not gently changing. It is convulsing. It is tearing itself open. It is sharpening its knives. And while nations fortify their arteries, South Africa is calmly slitting its own veins and calling it fiscal discipline.
Let us speak plainly, because politeness has failed and courtesy has become complicity.
The global order has ruptured. Not cracked. Not wobbled. Ruptured. Supply chains are now weapons. Ports are pressure points. Rail lines are no longer infrastructure — they are veins of power, chokeholds, pressure valves on the throat of survival. Whoever controls movement controls life. Whoever controls logistics commands the fate of nations.
‘No new money’ doctrine
Meanwhile, we are cutting off the nourishment that keeps our country’s spine intact and pretending that this enforced austerity is discipline — wrenching the central column of our national body until it creaks and splinters, gouging it out like a cadaver dressed in ribbons, smiling while calling it prudence.
We are tightening the corset of neglect over the lungs of industry, sucking marrow from the bones of production, crowning ourselves with the illusion of discipline. Every vertebra crushed under policy, every tendon of commerce snapped, every nerve of capability fried in the bureaucracy’s fire — yet we whisper ‘fiscal restraint’ as if the screams in the dark were merely a minor inconvenience.
We are eating our own guts and calling it a salad.
Our logistics network is not a side issue. It is not a freak-of-nature department. It is not a budget line. It is the steel backbone of the nation — the ribcage protecting our economy’s lungs, the arteries feeding its heart. It connects our mines to markets, our farms to shelves, our factories to the world. Without it, the country does not limp. It collapses in a heap: bones splintering, organs failing, eyes wide in shock.
And yet, we are snapping its bones with policy.
This is not prudence. This is industrial vandalism.
The government speaks in tongues — lofty on podiums, lethal in spreadsheets. It preaches industrialisation, sovereignty, dignity, transformation — words so polished they glitter — while simultaneously enforcing a cold, mechanical ‘no new money’ doctrine that leaves the nation’s logistics system bleeding out in the gutter, its blood pooling beneath it.
A nation that cannot move its own goods is not sovereign — it is a resource colony draped in a flag, waiting to be emptied by those who arrived hungry and prepared…
You cannot preach sovereignty while amputating the limbs that make sovereignty possible. That is not policy. That is theatre. And the stage is on fire.
Yes, competition matters. Yes, private operators belong in the system. Inefficiency rots monopolies, and sunlight kills mould. But let us not insult ourselves with fairy tales. Private trains cannot run on shattered rails. Markets do not mend broken tracks by wishing harder. Capital does not pour into a graveyard and call it investment.
If the tracks are broken, the trains will not run.
If the trains do not run, the factories will not produce.
If the factories do not produce, the economy will choke.
And when the economy chokes, the people suffocate.
This is the spine of the country being gnawed raw. These are the lungs of industry collapsing under the chokehold of neglect. This is the very heartbeat of commerce strangled, screaming in silence, while the architects of its ruin polish their spreadsheets and sip their tea.
‘Standing naked in a storm’
Transnet, the state-owned logistics entity, is the landlord of our economy. And right now, the roof is caving in, the wiring is sparking, the walls are cracking — and the landlord has been told, with bureaucratic serenity, that there is ‘no money’. So the tenants flee. Investors walk. Manufacturers shut their doors. Engineers pack their tools. The lights flicker — and then they go out.
Slowly. Then all at once.
Here lies the deeper, crueller wound: without public procurement, our local engineering and manufacturing sector is not merely wounded — it is being bled dry in an alley while policy looks the other way. Livelihoods are collapsing. Futures are being quietly buried without funerals.
We are not just losing infrastructure. We are losing capability. We are losing memory. We are losing power.
Weaponised supply chains
And in the midst of this collapse, we are flinging open the gates of a broken network to the world without a strong, funded state custodian to hold the keys. This is not openness. This is exposure. This is standing naked in a storm and calling it reform.
Without a strong, sovereign infrastructure owner, we do not get competition; we get capture. We do not get diversity; we get dominance. And in a world already fractured and hostile, we risk replacing a local monopoly with foreign control over our most strategic corridors.
Ask yourself — and answer honestly — in an age of weaponised supply chains, do we really want our food, fuel, and exports held hostage by global logistics giants whose loyalty lies not with this land, but with their shareholders?
That is not reform. That is surrender dressed in policy language.
We need a new deal — not a timid memo, not another glossy framework, not another empty consultation — but a hard, unapologetic, sovereign reset.
Invest in infrastructure. Not as charity. Not as a rescue. As national security. Tracks and signals are not luxuries; they are the skeleton of the state. Break the skeleton, and the body collapses — no matter how beautifully the head speaks.
Abdication
Push local industry to the fore. Use development finance not as a pipeline to foreign factories, but as a furnace for domestic industry. Build here. Weld here. Engineer here. Train here. This is how infrastructure becomes industrial power — not by importing our future in shipping containers and calling it progress.
Hold the line on sovereignty. Reform without control is not reform; it is abdication. The rules must ensure that the strategic arteries of this country remain under South African authority. We cannot auction our sovereignty to the lowest bidder and then act surprised when the invoice is our future.
Calling for more state funding is not sentimental longing; it is a demand for survival. It is not sugar-coated folly. It is a demand for a future not built on rust, regret, and abandoned rail yards.
We do not need a return to monopoly. But neither can we leap blindly into liberalisation while the backbone lies shattered on the floor. That is not reform. That is a controlled demolition — except no one seems to be controlling it.
If we fail to fund the backbone, everything else will fail with it.
Reform will fail.
Industrialisation will fail.
Local manufacturing will fail.
Economic dignity will fail.
A nation that cannot move its own goods is a puppet draped in a flag: no power, no voice, no control — its strings pulled by foreign hands. It is a resource colony, a quarry with a flag, a warehouse with a hymn, waiting quietly to be emptied by those who arrived hungry and prepared.
Industry veins will clot
The government must act — not in whispers, not in timid gestures, not in polished speeches that soothe the conscience while the nation burns. It must rise, claws bared, spine straightened, and seize the levers of power before the body of the economy collapses into ruin.
Fund the tracks — every kilometre, every signal, every rusted joint that binds this nation together — with relentless urgency. Without them, the veins of industry will clot, and the heart of commerce will stop.
Empower the private sector not as a favour, not as a concession, but as a roaring engine of purpose — driving investment, innovation, and survival under a state that shields, governs, and enforces its authority.
Protect our industry as if the very marrow of the nation is under siege — because it is. Do not falter. Do not delay. Do not whisper about frameworks and committees while the country bleeds. Act now, with fire in your chest and steel in your hands, or watch the spoils carried off by those who were ready to feast while we hesitated.
Or accept this truth: if we do not take our seat at the table, we will not just be on the menu. We will be torn limb from limb, devoured by those who came armed, hungry, and ready. There will be no polite warnings, no second chances.
The hour is here. Stand, strike, and seize control — or watch everything we built stripped away, leaving nothing but bones where a sovereign nation once stood.
*Themba Khumalo is a political commentator, columnist and former editor
