President Cyril Ramaphosa delivers the Keynote Address at the SEIFSA Business Breakfast_1
The legislative and institutional framework for rail reform is being modernized. We're modernizing that. We're making that a lot better. Significant private investment will be required to restore locomotives, wagons, signaling systems, rail infrastructure, and terminal capacity. And all this is happening because the government does not have all the money. The government spends most of its money on social welfare, on looking after our people, and making sure that we reverse the vestiges of poverty that apartheid bequeathed on our people. Again, this represents an an industrial opportunity. South Africa once possessed formidable capacity in rail engineering and rail equipment manufacturing. We must rebuild them. And this is where your industry plays a role. We should be manufacturing more of the locomotives, the wagons, the wheels, the axles, signaling equipment, and components required by our rail system. The same applies to our ports. Significant investment is being directed towards port infrastructure, cranes, handling equipment, and terminal modernization as we advance reforms in the port system. And the same applies to our water system, which we are now also reforming. Integrated steel making, mining, manufacturing, and virtually every productive sector depend on reliable supplies of industrial water. We've therefore embarked on a fundamental reform of the water sector. We recently published the national water action plan whose implementation will be coordinated through the national water crisis committee that I set up. They are running complaints in the country that I set up uh commissions, I set up committees, I do all these things. And what I'm really good at is to bring people together. Bring people together to work together just like what Elias is doing. He brings you all together to a breakfast. Can't be anything wrong with that.