Is ignorance truly bliss?

As the world’s logistics networks grow smarter and more connected, South Africa’s transport sector remains trapped in a fog of missing data, institutional neglect and deliberate ignorance. NICK PORÉE unpacks the situation.

In a world of increasing information overload, digitalisation, artificial intelligence (AI) and media availability, the gap between developed economies and less sophisticated regions is widening. Nowhere is this more evident than in the field of transport and logistics, where the seamless interconnectivity of the disciplined international structures provides real-time knowledge of the movements of goods, prices, costs and the impacts of events.

Monitoring of transport activities by associations and authorities provides digitalised data analysed into accurate and meaningful reports on all key aspects of each mode. Seamless systems enable automated processing of complex industrial activities, supply chains, payments and coordination of logistical activities.

In South Africa, however, the ossified structure of the statist transport regulatory system is so devoid of monitoring information that it is isolated from the realities of modern industrial logistics. It is ignored as just another unnecessary cost buried in the overall taxation system. One could say that the lack of information is “deliberate ignorance” in the modern world (fittingly, “ignorance” is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “a lack of knowledge or information”).

AN INDUSTRY NOBODY IS COUNTING (ANYMORE)

In 1975, before the deregulation of road freight transport, there were 16,486 South African transport enterprises – as noted by the Central Statistical Service (the precursor to the Department of Statistics South Africa/Stats SA) in 1982. In 2025, a brief analysis of 4,000 vehicles on the N3 corridor showed ownership by 1,765 firms – an average of 2.34 vehicles per firm.

If this is extrapolated to the estimated 500,000 commercial vehicles in South Africa, as eNatis points out, it would indicate that there are over 200,000 vehicle owners or operators on public roads. This number is likely too low, however, as the survey was based on heavy commercial vehicle ownership only.

The fact that there is no database of these operators and whether they are registered, licensed, or monitored, makes the estimate conjectural, but does not alter the fact that there is no information about their numbers, identities and activities – making the management of this sector haphazard and ineffective.

Lack of information about transport activities is further compounded by several instances of institutionalised misinformation.

STATISTICS THAT DON’T ADD UP

Stats SA does, however, conduct a monthly survey of transport undertakings and uses them to produce a complex series of “national” statistics for all modes, passengers and goods. The data is derived from a sample of 784 out of 5,136 enterprises.

In April, last year, the response reached an impressive 72.3% (566 enterprises). Nevertheless, this represents a sample of about 0.003% of the national transport sector in all modes – hardly convincing for national strategic planning.

A TRAINING LEVY WITH NOTHING TO SHOW?

The Transport Education and Training Authority (TETA) Annual Report (2024/25) records 83,611 employees in the road freight sector, even though there must be over 500,000 drivers and at least another 200,000 others. The TETA total is derived from the number of firms paying the R1 billion-per-year training levy, which supports a TETA salary bill of R88.8 million and yields a cash surplus of R865.3 million.

The sectoral “education and training” organisation is so removed from the realities of the industry that it is largely ignored. This is despite the desperate national lack of adequate and relevant managerial, technical and operational training and licensing – activities which are uncoordinated, under-resourced and often corrupt.

The rapidly changing commercial environment underscores the urgency of training reform, increases in new technology in the industry and evidence from the appalling road safety situation. Yet, the lack of vision and drive is fostered by the limitations of the myopic and egocentric relationships in the TETA training model, which has failed to provide the skills and competencies needed for the future competitiveness of the South African economy.

There is little comfort in knowing that, as the TETA CEO points out, “With R1.07 billion revenue collected and a stable surplus, TETA remains financially viable. Co-funding strategies and revenue diversification will remain critical to offsetting levy volatility.”

THE DATABANK THAT NEVER WAS

From the deregulation of road freight in 1986 to the present, there has been a constant lament that there is insufficient information about private sector road freight operations. Around 2006, however, we designed and created the nine Provincial Freight Transport Databanks with a uniform structure. These were intended to support consolidation into a national information bank and were to be reinforced by information from the Transport Master Plan and other studies.

After several aborted “request for proposals”, the Department of Transport (DoT) allowed the national development to wither, and the information gathered has been wasted and lost to all but tangled AI searches.

REGULATION IN NAME ONLY

The ineffective systems of legislation, regulation and monitoring, eNatis, overload control, accident recording, border management, vehicle condition and road safety enforcement are all in need of reform, digitalisation and modernisation to make them effective and remove corruption. The lack of competent direction and complacent ignorance of the deficiencies of the National Transport Policy are major factors in the glacial speed and ongoing costs of the governmental efforts to resolve the second “national logistics crisis”.

The impact of transport policy failures has recurred 40 years after the first crisis forced the deregulation of road freight in 1986. The deliberate, dysfunctional dilution of the Road Transport Quality System (RTQS), which was recommended by the National Transport Policy Study of the 1980s, needs rigorous redirection to establish disciplined regulatory controls in order to meet international performance standards.

The Freight Transport Strategy, approved by Cabinet in 2017, was designed to recover the situation, but it has been rejected and abandoned. The situation is a failure of the DoT, where the complacent lack of industrial competence leaves road freight transport legislation, monitoring and enforcement to the tangled and bloated entities of the Road Traffic Management Corporation, Cross-Border Road Transport Agency, Road Accident Fund, South African Bureau of Standards and nine provinces. These entities are costing the country billions of rands with ineffective direction and a growing turmoil of unregulated freight transport and industrial logistics inefficiencies.

THE COST OF NOT KNOWING

The lack of coordinated regulation leaves the authorities with minimal information and nebulous academic perceptions of the transport and logistics industries. There is a lack of appreciation for the complex logistical systems that put South African peanut butter, baked beans and even milk on supermarket shelves in Zambia’s Ndola, Malawi’s Blantyre and Tanzania’s Dodoma; or how fashion clothing and auto spares are coordinated and sourced from 10 countries for sale in Brakpan.

There is detailed information from Customs about the international import-export movements, but no information about domestic logistics. The dysfunctional relationship between authorities and industry is causing unrealistic assumptions and massive investment in bulk railways by the government, whilst industries that understand the logistics are building extensive off-rail consolidation and distribution centres in Durban and Gauteng.

The South African industrial sector has the capacity and the systems capabilities to eliminate the information deficiencies, but coordinated digitalisation requires structural and regulatory support to ensure relevance, standardisation and completeness. The process of regulation will necessarily take time and will require very careful implementation to build the systems on solid foundations. Fortunately, numerous examples of functioning overseas systems can enable the design of an integrated matrix of local data to support future planning.

The question is no longer whether ignorance is bliss – it is whether South Africa can afford it any longer. The needs are real; the challenge is there and, in the South African way, we must “make a plan”.