Transnet is reporting a turnaround. Volumes are up; the language in its 2025 annual report has shifted from crisis management to “decisive turning point”. But the Draft National Rail Master Plan sets a 2030 target of 250-million tonnes. Transnet is currently moving 168-million tonnes a year. That leaves roughly 80-million tonnes that travels by truck instead of train — and truck freight in South Africa is expensive and steadily destroying the roads it runs on.
Rail freight peaked at 226.6-million tonnes in the 2015 financial year, according to Transnet’s annual reports. Then came a six-year slide, the result of deferred maintenance, equipment failure, vandalism and reduced infrastructure investment. By 2023, Transnet was carrying 149.5-million tonnes, a level not seen since the early 2010s. Recovery has begun since that low, but on a chart it reads as a small upward tick at the bottom of a cliff.
