South Africa’s freight landscape is slowly shifting, with rail beginning to show modest signs of recovery while road freight is continuing to decline, according to independent economist Elize Kruger.This comes as the volume of freight transported on South Africa’s roads has declined slightly since peaking near 90% of total freight payload in November2022, and now accounting for approximately 82.1%.Kruger said after modest growth of 1.5% in 2023, the road freight sector had seen a sharp contraction in 2024, with an 8.3% drop in payload volumes.Rail, meanwhile, has shown tentative signs of recovery. From a low point in November 2023, when only 10.9% of freight was moved by rail, volumes have improved. In March this year, rail’s share had risen to 17.9%, compared to a full-year average of 16.9% in 2024 and 15.6% in 2023.“While these figures are still well below the long-term average of 25.9% recorded between 2008 and 2017 – before the significant decline in rail performance – the upward trend is encouraging,” said K ruger.Speaking at a recent Transpor t Forum, she said the country’s current rail infrastructure challenges stemmed from long-standing underinvestment. “What we are struggling with today in terms of things like rail infrastructure actually dates back to when there was no capex invested in the rail infrastructure.”She said government’s recent move to open the rail network to third-party access was a major development for the country, but warned industry not to expect fast results as structural reforms would take time to materialise. “When will we suddenly see the tons transported by rail leaping upwards? You cannot quite time that.”The reality, she said, was that road freight would remain the main mode of transport for cargo for the significant future. “Road freight is still the dominant sector. Also, we have seen that when rail’s wheels come off, as was the case in 2021 and 2022, the road freight sector is ready to take up the slack.”While road freight growth has waned since 2022, Kruger said rail freight remained a laggard.She pointed out that total economic growth remained a concern. “While the country experienced average growth of 3.6% before 2009, this dropped to 1.8% in the following decade. In the current ten-year period, the figure has slumped to just 1.1%. “If you look at the past two, three, four years, we are talking less than 1% real growth. These numbers are critically low if you think about the needs of the country and the socioeconomic challenges we need to address. It is simply too low to create jobs,” said Kruger.LV
