MK's Molefe challenges claim that state capture played role in Transnet's current woes

CAPE TOWN - The role state capture has played in the current troubles facing Transnet was in dispute in Parliament on Tuesday as the state freight company’s former CEO, now MK Party MP, Brian Molefe, challenged the claim. 

The battle lines were drawn with his former colleagues when Transnet Group CEO Michelle Phillips said that debt and assets acquired during the so-called state capture years had put Transnet in its precarious financial and operational situation. 

The struggling SOE was before Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) on Tuesday to discuss its over R7 billion loss in the past financial year.

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Phillips said that servicing the company’s burgeoning debt of R130 billion was leaving little money for its operational turnaround. 

She said that almost half this debt was acquired during the state capture years between 2011 and 2018. 

Phillips added that a lack of maintenance during this time and the acquisition of locomotives which now could not be used were also contributing factors.

"There’s a R60 billion [of] what we call ineffective debt - this is debt that’s been incurred, and debt that we have to redeem, but for which we in effect do not receive any positive value."

But MK MP Brian Molefe challenged Phillips on this, saying these were the company’s most profitable years when the movement of goods was also at its highest.

He was Transnet CEO between 2011 and 2015 before moving to Eskom.

"Two hundred and twenty-six million tonnes were achieved in 2017 in what a lot of people call the state capture years, and the 226 million tonnes had never been achieved before in Transnet, and has never been achieved since."

He was backed up by the party’s David Skosana, who asked for factual proof of the impact of state capture, saying much of the evidence at the Zondo Commission of Inquiry was merely "gossip".