The South African transport sector in the 1970s

Abstract

For the transport sector of the South African economy, the 1970s were to be a decade of massive and irreversible change that affected all and transformed many modes of transport. In the maritime and ports sector, these changes amounted to nothing short of a revolution, as the establishment of two new deepwater bulk ports propelled South Africa to the forefront of international bulk transport, while in the realm of general cargo and liner shipping our national ports were forced to confront the compelling logic of containerisation and unitisation of cargoes that were hitherto transported by conventional and more labour-intensive techniques. These changes were also to exert a substantial impact on landside transport, as the two new ports of Richards Bay and Saldanha required two entirely new rail networks to link them with their respective hinterlands; the handling of containerised cargo generated a complete cargo-handling infrastructure in the ports and inland centres, in the process elevating Johannesburg to the status of a dry port; and the advent of a truly multimodal cargo-handling philosophy created new opportunities and tensions at the road/rail transport interface. In air transport, the introduction of wide-bodied jumbo aircraft on both international and regional routes lowered the real costs of passenger transport, accelerated the final eclipse of sea as a genuine point-to-point transport mode for people as opposed to freight, and ushered in the era of mass transportation.