JOHANNESBURG - Rail transport in South Africa is a crucial part of the country's infrastructure and the government needs to urgently address this and arrest the decline of the network.
The poor state of the rail system has led to disruptions in freight over the years, costing not only Transnet billions of rand, but also the broader South African economy.
Professor Patrick Bond of the University of Johannesburg, says with trucks taking over the bulk of the freight industry, this has left the sector with a whole host of problems.
He said, "With the crash of especially Transnet freight capacity, the trucks have taken over."
"We see these trucks line that goes all the way from Lephalale, in the north all the way down to Richards Bay to carry coal its been disrupted. We use to do 80-million tons a year, we did 50-million last year."
"Once trucks take over and they use these small back roads and even bigger roads in northern KwaZulu-Natal, they race through communities and now the communities are saying no, we won't have them here and they do blockade."
"So the tensions are rising because the trucks are also characterised by a lot of xenophobia creating a tension between the locals and those immigrants trying to goods back and forth to Zimbabwe and Zambia."
"There are lot of big problems at that level and the policy is correct, let's go from road to rail and its a climate imperative because trucks also use so much petrol and they very really rip off the road. So there is a lot of external costs that is just passed to us."