You can also listen to this podcast on iono.fm here. ADVERTISEMENT CONTINUE READING BELOW JEREMY MAGGS: Welcome to another episode of FixSA here on Moneyweb, conversations committed to finding solutions and viable approaches to the complex and multifaceted issues facing South Africa. I’m Jeremy Maggs and a very warm welcome.
But actually all of that infrastructure and all of those assets are operated by humans and by people who have to behave in a specific way every day when they come to work, and have very specific responsibilities and accountabilities to make the most out of those resources, that equipment and that infrastructure that we have available to us.
And if we don’t have the right leadership in place and we don’t have the right vision in place, then we are doomed to fail from the beginning.SANDRA DU TOIT: I think there’s a trust deficit that we are probably tired of talking about between industry leaders and some of our government actors. So, when you’re talking about collaborative leadership, you’re talking about an engagement between Transnet and the mining industry, peer to peer – no master and servant relationships – where people work together collaboratively to find solutions, then make individuals accountable for the implementation of those solutions down to quite granular detail. And you then have individuals working together to achieve that specific vision.
SANDRA DU TOIT: Jeremy, absolutely, and I think a big part of those frank conversations and that openness again comes about parties working together collaboratively to find solutions that are fair. And so, whether that comes in the form of load-out stations on mines, whether that comes in the form of rail allocation, we certainly have not seen a single CEO in the mining industry saying: ‘I’m not prepared to make space for anyone else. I want to keep this all to myself so that I can benefit and someone else will fail.’
You’ll appreciate that growing an economy is not about how you dish out the existing pie. It is about creating the enabling infrastructure that makes the pie bigger so that more people can participate more meaningfully. And he told me he had said to the guys: ‘I’m here to help and don’t pay me anything. I’m going to work for free. I’m happy to climb in here and help anywhere I can, in any way I can.’ This was to the extent that he refused to have a company name on his badge or on the programme. He was just there as Mxolisi.