Cable theft and spare parts shortage paralyse South African railways

Approximately 200 of Transnet’s new locomotives are lying dormant due to an inability to get spares combined with overhead cable theft, according to a Sunday Times report.

This is costing South Africa billions in lost export and Transnet may have to resort to de-electrifying its fleets as a lack of spares threatens to make the entire electric locomotive fleet redundant.

The rail company is unable to get spares due to a deal corrupted by state capture, which saw Transnet receive around 500 of the expected 1,046 locomotives, while the Guptas and their local allies reportedly got millions in kickbacks.

“There were no spares contracts included in that — apart from initial delivery spares, there has been no support [from the manufacturers],” Transnet Engineering chief executive Ralph Mills told the Sunday Times.

“We have been limping along trying to keep these locomotives going.”

Transnet is continuing to work with General Electric and BT Alstom. The first of which has delivered 233 diesel locomotives, while the second’s contract to supply 240 electric locomotives is ongoing.

“There’s no problem getting spares out of them,” Mills said.

“The problem comes with the Chinese manufacturers because the contract is suspended and there’s no service or goods exchange between the two parties.”

Mills explained that Transnet’s fleet of 22E electric locomotives is also slowly diminishing as Transnet cannot get spares for them.

Furthermore, there is also a shortage of spares for the fleet of 195 20E and 21E locomotives supplied before the tainted deal.

Transnet is working to prolong its legacy fleet’s lifespan.

“We’ve had to continue operating some of our legacy fleet for a bit longer than anticipated, and of course those come with their own problems,” the Sunday Times quoted Transnet Freight Rail CEO Sizakele Mzimela as saying.

“There’s even greater maintenance that needs to be done and a greater failure rate because we had anticipated that we would already have pulled them out of service.”

The struggling electric locomotive fleet adds to Transnet’s woes, as the company is being hard hit by a rise in cable theft.

As a result, Transnet may have to consider de-electrifying its entire fleet.

The South African government was warned about the potential collapse of the country’s railway system two decades ago but did not implement measures to prevent it, former Transnet executive Tau Morwe recently said.

“Some 20 years back, Transnet — via Spoornet back then — went to Parliament and asked that the Railway Police be brought back, that has never happened,” Morwe said.

Morwe was speaking on the back of a report from experienced rail journalist David Williams, which revealed the shocking state of South Africa’s railway system.

According to Williams, approximately 66% of the country’s above-ground electrical cables on the 3,000km network of the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) has been stolen or damaged.

Transnet Freight Rail (TFR) said in November that it had lost more than 1,000km of copper cable to theft in 2021, which worked out to an average of 3.18km per day at the time.

TFR said it suffered an average of 600 incidents of theft and vandalism every month.

“The incidents range from the theft of copper cable, vandalism of substations which are crucial to the running of our electrified fleet, theft of wiring and cable from locomotives, theft of wooden rail sleepers and other malicious damage to Transnet property,” it said.

Williams said that at such high levels of damage, much of the remaining system had been rendered useless.

Engineers told him that restoring this infrastructure into working condition would cost about half a million rand per kilometre.

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