Conning the ship of state 

There is an enormous difference between the words “conn” and “con”. If South Africa is going to prosper, it needs a captain to conn the ship of state – and not more misinformation and cons, says NICK PORÉE.

A captain “conns” a ship across the seas, using knowledge and information from various sources. The word “conn” implies knowledge, situational awareness, and the ability to coordinate control of rudder, sails, propeller, and crew. If they choose to use a weathercock, they will have the wind at their back, full sails, and fair speed, but will not know their position or whether the ship is on course. In fact, ships are sailed across boundless oceans using dependable information, the sextant for position, and the compass for direction. Modern vessels have a range of navigation equipment, satellite positioning, radar, and radio beacons to give reliable information with which to plot the course and conn the ship. 

In modern slang, the word “con” has connotations of persuasion, concealment, and deceit with nefarious intentions. It implies deliberate false information and concealment or distortion of facts. From the large number of court cases in South Africa it is evident that the word has application to much of the dealings of the civil service. It is an unfortunate feature of public enterprises that they are responsible to a bureaucracy which is itself unmeasurable in relation to expenditure and revenue.

“Bureaucratic management”, according to renowned economist Ludwig von Mises, is the management of affairs which cannot be checked by economic calculation.  No price or value is attached to the administration’s performance (as is the case in private industry), hence the reports of departments overspending by billions of rands with no logical explanation of how this is even possible! It is regrettable that the information distortion and concealment are also apparent in the management of the state-owned enterprises, as is continually unearthed by investigative journalists.

Misrepresentations by executives are often defended with supporting data supplied by professional consultants, as with the projections which motivated the budgets for the spate of locomotive buying by Transnet in the “Gupta era”. The same tendency to exaggerate is evident in the current Port of Durban Master Plan, which sees growth to 11 million containers in 20 years from a moribund economy, with no economic justifications. It includes the verbiage around the railway private sector participation (PSP) plans for the “container line” which is under-utilised and unprofitable due to inefficiency and customer defection. Some of the “data” being bandied about and supplied to the leadership and public gives a new twist to the term “pros and cons”.

All this has relevance for the joint Presidential and Industry Initiative to resolve the logistics crisis, as opinions are being marshalled from various “professional” sources to create a Logistics Roadmap. Whether this is to be based on commercial reality or corporate wishes is not yet clear. The wry comment from a highly respected chief executive in the logistics industry was: “We have often offered to help, but we need better information and more transparency.”

Artistic reorganisation of balance sheets and distorted reporting do not alter the reality of the current incapacity and mismanagement. It is to be hoped that disclosure will prevail and that private sector involvement will lead to serious investigation and exposure of the current conditions and the realistic potential for recovery.

The current situation as I write this article is that there are 283 trucks in the 8.5-km queue taking 48 hours to unload at Richards Bay. The port of Durban needs billions of rands for upgrades to provide capacity for current cargoes at zero GDP growth, and billions more if current economic policies are ever changed to create industrial growth. Port and rail inefficiencies require complete restructuring into commercially competitive, responsible, companies… but first the backlog of deferred maintenance and destruction must be restored to workable condition. The process of restructuring has been repeatedly recommended to and resisted by incumbents for the last 20 years. 

It must be recognised that decisions about optimal transport and logistics for the supply chains of industry are made in company boardrooms, not in government offices. There is real danger that the current inefficiencies will be maintained by fresh injections from fiscus, burdening taxpayers and increasing debt. If the necessary massive capital injections are to be factored into future tariffs (as would be expected in commercial concerns), the ports and railways will be so uncompetitive that land freight will stay on road and maritime freight will continue to move to other ports or continue to be a barrier to industrial investment, growth, and employment.

To conn their ship, the captain uses reliable internal and external information and plots the course ahead without fixation on what lies astern. As the kehlas (Zulu headmen) tell us, “Lowo ohlale ebuka okwedlule ufulathele ikusasa” (“Who looks behind ignores the future”). We need real, serious change – not obfuscation, smoke and mirrors, and more committees.