Coal mined in Botswana will have to be moved to the coast – for export to India or China – on a new “heavy gauge” railway independent of South Africa, according to Professor Roman Greynberg, senior research fellow at the Botswana Institute of Development Policy Analysis. Writing in the Zimbabwe Independent, he explains:“Cecil Rhodes’ narrow gauge from [the] Cape to Bulawayo is no longer fit for the purpose”. Many in Botswana, he suggests, view South Africa’s proposed railway into Swaziland as “a power play,” undermining local initiatives. In any case, he points out, there is no way the Richard’s Bay Coal Terminal could handle Botswana’s planned 70-90 million tonnes of coal exports annually. Greynberg finds South Africa’s current performance in economic terms unimpressive, reminding readers that the ignoring of warnings given 1n 1998 resulted in the present electricity crisis. The railways, he adds, did nothing about bottlenecks in the past twenty years. The days when everything south of the Congo River depended on the South African Railways are coming to an end, he concludes.
Original article [Railways Africa]
