Transforming infrastructure in South Africa: A new partnership with the UK
Image: IOL
In a significant move aimed at revolutionising infrastructure delivery in South Africa, Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Dean Macpherson yesterday unveiled a partnership with the United Kingdom government.
This collaboration is set to harness the skills and expertise of UK companies to address the pressing need for efficient infrastructure projects in the country.
The launch event in Durban was attended by UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves and other UK diplomats, including those based in South Africa. It was described as a historic partnership between the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure and the United Kingdom, aimed at capacitating the department as it works towards using public assets for the public good and transforming South Africa into a construction hub.
Reflecting on his department's achievements in a year in office, Macpherson stated that significant progress has been made, with the capacity to achieve even more.
'One of the biggest problems in government that we have identified is how infrastructure is procured and implemented. We (Public Works) package and prepare those projects for loan departments and SOEs, but then we wait for them to come and do that (implementation). We see indifferent results from that,' he said.
Speaking about the achievements on the project preparation side, he noted, 'In just over a year, we have doubled the construction book of infrastructure-ready projects to R268 billion. That is what Infrastructure SA has accomplished in one year.'
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But he noted that there are serious shortcomings in the current implementation of projects. Macpherson called for a streamlined approach to implementing government projects. He proposed that a single entity, possibly Infrastructure SA, should oversee these projects from inception to completion.
'In my view, this is Dean's view, not the government's view; if we continue to procure and construct in the way that we are, we are going to have very slow delivery. I would argue that many departments and many SOEs are not infrastructure implementers; it's not their speciality.
'Yet we say to them, you must go and do so. I think we need to have more coordination and a more central focus on procurement and implementation of projects in an entity like Infrastructure SA.
"What I am arguing for is that Infrastructure SA should move beyond just being a coordinator; we should now start capacitating them to be a procurer and implementer, and then hand those projects back to their clients. I think we will see a lot more delivery if we do that,' he said.
Regarding the partnership with the UK, he stated that it will see the United Kingdom provide expertise and capacity support across three focus areas:
1. Project Capstone: This will support the effective operationalisation of the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure's Special and Strategic Delivery Unit (SSDU). This unit will accelerate infrastructure delivery by focusing on high-impact and high-priority projects and addressing systemic process inefficiencies that hinder effective implementation.
2. Project Speed: This will enhance the management of public assets through more effective and efficient public sector asset management, including improved resource efficiency.
3. Infrastructure South Africa's Adopt-a-Municipality Programme: This will strengthen infrastructure delivery at the municipal level in selected focus municipalities.
Macpherson said that, taken together, these projects represent a step-change in infrastructure collaboration between the United Kingdom and South Africa, helping to realise his vision of using public assets for the public good and turning South Africa into a construction site.
'Like Chancellor Reeves, I firmly believe that increased infrastructure investment leads to accelerated economic growth, which will undoubtedly help to create jobs.
'At a time when South Africa faces a persistently high unemployment rate, we welcome any support to address this issue head-on and thank the United Kingdom for their commitment to our shared goals.'
Chancellor Reeves stated that the partnership and projects will support the government of South Africa in accelerating the delivery of much-needed infrastructure, creating growth and jobs for young people in South Africa by drawing on expertise. This collaboration will benefit both countries and businesses and help deliver economic growth in both nations.
Ä statement on the UK government website said this model of Government-to-Government (G2G) Infrastructure Partnership has previously delivered strong growth and jobs in countries such as Peru.
In the same statement, UK Business and Trade Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds said: 'This Government-to-Government Partnership builds on the UK's thriving business relationship with South Africa and shows how our Plan for Change is paving the way for growth at home by unlocking new opportunities abroad.'
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IOL News
8 hours ago
- IOL News
Transforming infrastructure in South Africa: A new partnership with the UK
Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Dean Macpherson Image: IOL In a significant move aimed at revolutionising infrastructure delivery in South Africa, Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Dean Macpherson yesterday unveiled a partnership with the United Kingdom government. This collaboration is set to harness the skills and expertise of UK companies to address the pressing need for efficient infrastructure projects in the country. The launch event in Durban was attended by UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves and other UK diplomats, including those based in South Africa. It was described as a historic partnership between the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure and the United Kingdom, aimed at capacitating the department as it works towards using public assets for the public good and transforming South Africa into a construction hub. Reflecting on his department's achievements in a year in office, Macpherson stated that significant progress has been made, with the capacity to achieve even more. 'One of the biggest problems in government that we have identified is how infrastructure is procured and implemented. We (Public Works) package and prepare those projects for loan departments and SOEs, but then we wait for them to come and do that (implementation). We see indifferent results from that,' he said. Speaking about the achievements on the project preparation side, he noted, 'In just over a year, we have doubled the construction book of infrastructure-ready projects to R268 billion. That is what Infrastructure SA has accomplished in one year.' Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. 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'In my view, this is Dean's view, not the government's view; if we continue to procure and construct in the way that we are, we are going to have very slow delivery. I would argue that many departments and many SOEs are not infrastructure implementers; it's not their speciality. 'Yet we say to them, you must go and do so. I think we need to have more coordination and a more central focus on procurement and implementation of projects in an entity like Infrastructure SA. "What I am arguing for is that Infrastructure SA should move beyond just being a coordinator; we should now start capacitating them to be a procurer and implementer, and then hand those projects back to their clients. I think we will see a lot more delivery if we do that,' he said. Regarding the partnership with the UK, he stated that it will see the United Kingdom provide expertise and capacity support across three focus areas: 1. Project Capstone: This will support the effective operationalisation of the Department of Public Works and Infrastructure's Special and Strategic Delivery Unit (SSDU). This unit will accelerate infrastructure delivery by focusing on high-impact and high-priority projects and addressing systemic process inefficiencies that hinder effective implementation. 2. Project Speed: This will enhance the management of public assets through more effective and efficient public sector asset management, including improved resource efficiency. 3. Infrastructure South Africa's Adopt-a-Municipality Programme: This will strengthen infrastructure delivery at the municipal level in selected focus municipalities. Macpherson said that, taken together, these projects represent a step-change in infrastructure collaboration between the United Kingdom and South Africa, helping to realise his vision of using public assets for the public good and turning South Africa into a construction site. 'Like Chancellor Reeves, I firmly believe that increased infrastructure investment leads to accelerated economic growth, which will undoubtedly help to create jobs. 'At a time when South Africa faces a persistently high unemployment rate, we welcome any support to address this issue head-on and thank the United Kingdom for their commitment to our shared goals.' Chancellor Reeves stated that the partnership and projects will support the government of South Africa in accelerating the delivery of much-needed infrastructure, creating growth and jobs for young people in South Africa by drawing on expertise. This collaboration will benefit both countries and businesses and help deliver economic growth in both nations. Ä statement on the UK government website said this model of Government-to-Government (G2G) Infrastructure Partnership has previously delivered strong growth and jobs in countries such as Peru. In the same statement, UK Business and Trade Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds said: 'This Government-to-Government Partnership builds on the UK's thriving business relationship with South Africa and shows how our Plan for Change is paving the way for growth at home by unlocking new opportunities abroad.' THE MERCURY
IOL News
8 hours ago
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Two Judicial Sagas, Ten Years Apart: The Mabel Jansen and Selby Mbenenge Cases
Gillian Schutte is a film-maker, and a well-known social justice and race-justice activist and public intellectual. Image: IOL West Indian psychiatrist and decolonial philosopher, Frantz Fanon, wrote that 'the Black man has no ontological resistance in the eyes of the white man.' He named a violence deeper than physical domination: the psychic capture of the Black subject inside the white imaginary. In the colonial order, the Black man is not seen as a man; he is seen as a body, a phallus, a threat, an object of anxiety. The Black woman is not seen as a woman; she is seen as an overdetermined symbol, hypersexualised, violable, yet erased as a full erotic and political subject. Post-apartheid South Africa continues to move within these patterns. Two judicial sagas, ten years apart – the 2016 exposure of Judge Mabel Jansen and the current tribunal against Eastern Cape Judge President Selby Mbenenge – reveal how deeply colonial logic still shapes our public life, our media, and our institutions. In 2015, during a public debate on my Facebook page, Judge Mabel Jansen entered of her own will. She had been following my social justice feminist work for months, even inboxing me with praise. The debate she chose to join centred on a petition circulating about poor white Afrikaners begging the EU to 'repatriate' them – a discussion already thick with tensions about race, poverty, colonial grievance, and belonging. Into this space, Jansen dropped comments that landed like malfeasance. Here are her exact public statements: '99% of criminal cases I hear are of Black fathers/uncles/brothers raping children as young as five years old. Is this part of your culture? Because then you do not know the truth. And they do it to their children, sisters, nieces, and so on. Is this also attributable to white people somehow, because we take the blame for everything?' 'Fact: Black children and women are raped and abused, and beaten by Black men to an extent that is so sickening that one cannot even cope with it. And that is a fact.' 'Want to read my files: rape, rape, rape, rape of minors by Black families. It is never-ending.' 'Show me one Black woman who has not been molested herself … but culturally that is the viewpoint.' 'Apparently sex is simply to be had when required. And five years old, by the way, is old … apparently it is not regarded as rape, but the exertion of a male's right. And women allow the father to be the first.'When I answered that the majority of Black uncles, fathers, and brothers do most certainly not rape 5-year-olds, she replied, 'Oh yes, they do. 'She also inboxed me privately: 'In their culture, a woman is there to pleasure them. Period. It is seen as an absolute right, and a woman's consent is not required. 'I still have to meet a Black girl who was not raped at about 12. I am dead serious. One of her public posts also asserted that 'while white men also rape, it is not our natural way, whereas with Black men it is a way of life.'As Fanon writes in Black Skin, White Masks, 'The Negro is eclipsed. He has been turned into a penis. He is a penis.' Jansen's words performed this symbolic reduction: the Black man as violent phallus, the Black woman as voiceless body. For a year, I agitated for the system to act. I wrote articles, raised alarms, contacted advocates and constitutional lawyers, and lodged a formal complaint with the Judicial Service Commission (JSC). Silence. It was only when UCT activist-academic Brian Ihirwe Kamanzi shared the screenshots on Black Twitter a year later, after I drew his attention to them, that outrage ignited. The Black Lawyers Association stepped in. Organisers mobilised. Protests were staged, interviews were had, and the JSC could no longer look away. However, during this uprising, the media played a familiar game – they repeatedly referred to Gillian Schutte sharing private inboxed messages and questioned the morality of this. In short, I became the focus instead of the racist inner workings of the Judge and the fact that she presided over gender-based violence cases in her court. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. 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Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Next Stay Close ✕ They tried valiantly to turn the focus of the protests onto my amorality in order to divert the Black organising against Jansen to me. It failed. In the JSC hearing, Jansen's defence lawyers, using this same trope in their defence, sought to discredit me, portraying me as ideologically radical, emotionally unstable, and mentally unbalanced. How a huge firm with much experience imagined this was a good defence baffled even the judges who presided over the hearing. My own attorney, Tracey Lomax, spoke eloquently to this matter. The defence strategy failed. The JSC prepared for impeachment. Jansen resigned before the process was completed – escaping formal judgment but not public disgrace. My life turned into a living hell with multiple death threats aimed at my family, men with Voortrekker beards parked outside our house every day for a week, tracking our movements, an envelope laced with poison in our post-box which attacked my husband's central nervous system for days, and plentiful murderous social media aimed at instilling a sense of instability in our daily life. The media ignored this onslaught but chose to report on Jansen's claims that her life and the life of her children were being threatened because I wanted my '15 minutes of fame'.Privacy Only Applies to Whites, Then? This political history forms the backdrop to the Mbenenge case. In the current tribunal, private WhatsApp exchanges between Judge President Selby Mbenenge and court secretary Andiswa Mengo – filled with flirtation, erotic humour, playful negotiation, and mutual pleasure – have been hauled into public spectacle as evidence of sexual misconduct. The 'privacy argument' raised to shield Jansen has been discarded without hesitation. Fanon is again essential. In the colonial imaginary, Black male sexuality is imagined as excess, danger, and violence; Black women are imagined as bodies without agency. There is no script to hold African men negotiating desire, speaking of cunnilingus, imagining female pleasure, or showing concern for mutual satisfaction. There is no space to imagine African women as agents of their own pleasure, as partners in joy, as subjects of flirtation and orgasm. This is what Fanon called the white neurosis – a psychic malaise that turns Blackness into a site of phobic fantasy. It is why, in this case, liberal white feminist discourse reproduces the same reductive gaze as Jansen's open white supremacy. Both erase the fullness of Black erotic life. Both install the same whiteness default: the monstrous Black man, the violated Black woman. Yet the messages between Mbenenge and Mengo belong to ukudlalisa ngamazwi – an idiom of wordplay, teasing, humour, and mutual consent, deeply woven into isiXhosa culture. Mengo jokes, withholds, offers, and winks. She participates. She chooses. She suggests. She enjoys. Inside the tribunal, however, Advocate Scheepers has acted not as investigator but as moral accuser, akin to the inquisitors of the 12th-century European witch-hunting inquisitions – cross-examining by assertion, visibly contemptuous when blocked from introducing irrelevant material or over-the-top suggestion, following a script familiar to those who have watched how donor feminism, legal machinery, and liberal media merge into spectacles of moral panic. This script does not rely on careful evidence. It feeds on atmosphere, insinuation, and the rapid buttressing of guilt. Judge President Selby Mbenenge has not denied his role in the mutual flirtation – he has owned his sexuality as well as acknowledged Mengo's right to pleasure without judgment or shaming language. But he has resisted. He has challenged the expansion of charges, insisted on keeping the process tied to the legal question, and unsettled the moral machinery gathering around him. He has foiled the plot to take him down through perception, even while mainstream media is working overtime to create the idea that he is guilty. As in the Jansen case, where the system worried over a white woman's privacy and reputation, then turned its disciplinary gaze onto the whistleblower, in the Mbenenge case, the system moves to discipline a Black man, stripping away the agency of a Black woman, reducing them both to spectacle. Black X and Black AgencyOutside the courtroom, however, another public reads the messages differently. Across social media, across age and gender, people laugh delightedly, joke, make memes, print T-shirts with Mengo's face and the word 'ewe' – marking her participation, her agency, her pleasure. Besides many expressing recognition of 'her gameplay,' no one is going all out to shame Mengo. In this space, indigenous language speakers understand nuance, social cues, cultural code, idioms in isiXhosa and the many languages of South know that when Mbenenge refers to isiXhosa idioms and relational behaviours, he is not harking back to some precolonial animist past as liberal media asserts. He is speaking of DNA memory – the knowledge that African life has not been entirely erased by whiteness, that Ubuntu and cultural coding still live in modern African existence. For white structural racism, this is intolerable. What it cannot understand, it cannot rationalise. What it cannot rationalise, it must sully. What it cannot sully, it must discipline. The inquisitor's grasp moves in to capture, restrain, and reimpose bondage. As Fanon warned, 'the colonised is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country's cultural standards.' Any trace of unapologetic African intellectual and erotic agency, humour, or joy threatens this fragile white psychic order. What Machinery is at Work Here? This tribunal, then, is not only a legal proceeding; it is a political operation, where the machinery of whiteness works hand in hand with state power, NGOs, media platforms, and donor-aligned intellectuals to neutralise a judge who refused to serve colonial interests. It is no coincidence that Judge President Selby Mbenenge blocked Shell's seismic blasting along the Transkei coast, protecting ancestral marine lands from exploitation by powerful international actors. Shell (via BG International) and Impact Africa are leading the Transkei offshore exploration bid, while TotalEnergies, QatarEnergy, and Sasol have been advancing their own offshore successes further west, in the Orange Basin off South Africa's west coast. TotalEnergies and QatarEnergy recently secured significant stakes in Block 3B/4B of the Orange Basin, consolidating a major fossil fuel presence alongside Sasol's earlier partnerships. Mbenenge's ruling against Shell must be seen not merely as environmental justice but as a rare legal obstruction to a growing multinational fossil fuel push, largely headquartered in London, Paris, Doha, and Johannesburg. His landmark directives to rename Eastern Cape courts with indigenous African names also signalled a deeper dismantling of the linguistic and legal scaffolding of colonialism — a stance that may help explain why he has been targeted and discredited in other public arenas. These are decolonial interventions that have rattled both local elites and global extractive interests. And now, on Black X, we see why this moment has caught has become a symbol of a man who refuses shaming, a man who playfully, rather than patriarchally, knows his way around women's pleasure, a man whose unapologetic erotic agency defies the colonial scripts that position Black men as either dangerous or deviant. Mbenenge stands for an African masculinity that refuses containment, that speaks of mutual pleasure, that celebrates the playful, relational, and knowing erotic exchanges of African life. He insists that private flirtation is his right as much as it is Mengo's, arguing with conviction in the face of a non-Black legal team linked to an ecosystem of liberal media, ngo's, and, quite possibly intelligence think tanks, all working in tandem to remove him from his position. Together with his brilliant advocate, Muzi Sikhakhane, Mbenenge has, in many ways, put whiteness itself on trial – exposing how it moves through media headlines, NGO scripts, donor-backed moral campaigns, and institutional inquisitions. This is not the end of his story. It is the beginning of a broader political and cultural eruption – a struggle to reclaim African erotic agency, economic and environmental sovereignty, and decolonial justice. Black X will fight back. *Gillian Schutte is a filmmaker, and a well-known social justice and race-justice activist and public intellectual. ** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.
The Herald
13 hours ago
- The Herald
Deadly George building collapse was 'entirely preventable': Macpherson
The full ECSA investigation report will soon be published in the government gazette and an appeal window to these finding is currently underway which expires on August 3. This report must form part the police investigation to establish criminal negligence for what happened, he said. "If criminal wrongdoing is established, those responsible must be prosecuted without delay. We must ensure that people are held accountable for 34 souls losing their life." The reforms will be carried out in three phases as follows: Phase 1 from 2025 to 2026: Immediate interventions, including new regulations, mandatory standards and emergency protocols; Phase 2 from 2026 to 2028: Implementation of long-term reform, including legislative amendments and competency-based registration systems; and Phase 3 from 2028 onwards: Institutional consolidation and relocation of custodianship of building regulations functions and standards to the department of public works & infrastructure. A total of 34 people died and 28 were injured. Among those on the site were South Africans, Mozambicans, Malawians and Zimbabweans. Macpherson said he had noted how the tragedy had taken a toll on the families of the dead and injured workers. "There is great suffered in the families. They struggle to put food on the table, pay medical costs and have psychological challenges," he said. "We are exploring options with the department of social development and NGOs to provide relief or support to the families most affected, including those who have lost primary breadwinners. We also take seriously the vulnerabilities faced by foreign nationals on construction sites, many of whom work under exploitative or undocumented conditions." As political parties, it didn't help to abuse the situation for political gain, he added. George building collapse survivor Elelwani Mawela of Limpopo spoke about the sadness she experienced after the tragedy. She said while she survived it was difficult to talk about as she burst into tears and was comforted by Macpherson. TimesLIVE
