According to the World Bank and S&P Global Container Port Performance Index, SA occupies two distinct rankings.
One of our ports is ranked the most improved, while the other is ranked last in the annual rankings.
The Durban port, the biggest port in Africa, has the distinction of ranking the most improved port in the world.
However, the Cape Town port has the distinction of being ranked the worst in the world.
Both ports are under the management of our port authority, Transnet.
Though the Durban port improved, it still ranks 398 out of 400 ports under review worldwide.
One of the major metrics measured by the rankings is the amount of productive time ships spend at the port.
Put differently, it is how much time is wasted by ships waiting to be serviced, and the cost associated with such wasted productive time.
The underlying economic principle is that any time an asset sits idle, not engaged in productive work, it represents a cost to the investor who invested in that asset.
Looking at the choices made by SA through its elected governments during the democratic era, this principle does not seem to have been appreciated enough over the years.
The drivers of the improvement in the Durban port include the intensive interventions that were forced by its shockingly poor performance.
They include the upgrading of port equipment and the overhaul of maintenance systems.
The shockingly poor performance of the Cape Town port seems to have been driven by the decline in port infrastructure.
This led to frequent breakdowns in old port equipment.
This was compounded by Cape Town’s harsh weather and poor management and preparation for these conditions.
If looking at these two examples, there is a common thread.
When there is poor attention to ongoing investment in assets, they deteriorate.
This creates a cascade of wasted productive time throughout the system, regardless of which system it is.
The poor maintenance of port infrastructure leads to ships waiting for extended periods to be serviced.
This leads to compounding costs that accrue to the port as it loses business and the shipping companies as they must pay more for each delivery.
At the end of the line, there are consumers who must bear the brunt of these costs through increased prices.
While there are some people, particularly from the left-leaning political formations who might not like how this principle applies to people, it still applies.
Against the backdrop of the 50th commemoration of the June 16 riots, the amount of wasted human potential in our country borders on the criminal.
The youth unemployment rate in SA is the highest in the world.
This represents the unforgivable inability of the state to develop SA’s human resources to answer the needs of the South African economy at the very least.
The amount of young people who sit idle at home wasting an unquantifiable amount of potential value is simply numbing to think about.
The frustration and idealism which drove the 1976 riots has not translated into the pragmatism that builds and transfers ideals into reality.
That process of transfer from the ideal to the pragmatic is demonstrably unrelated to the eloquence of the emotive speeches of the political class.
Those speeches never stopped focusing at the ideal not as an altruistic effort, but increasingly as a form of creating resonance and support among the people.
This misdirection of attention creates a gaping hole which is the deep unappreciation of what it takes to reach those ideals.
It is the grasp of raw economic principles and the day-to-day management activities that makes things happen.
It is what builds things, ensures that the right assets are acquired, maintained and that virtually nothing goes to waste.
It is this grasp that brings the efforts of people into a system that produces meaningful work, the production of products and services.
This should be at the centre not only of the competence of political leaders, but of their language and rhetoric too.
Unless our youth discover and discard the thinking that allows so much disregard for economic principles, and the massive waste of youthful talent, we are terribly exposed.
There are no shortage of voices that will focus the youth once again on the emotive and ideal, lacking entirely in what is required to get there.
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