Hello and welcome to the So What podcast, in
which political economic analyst J .P. Landman
discusses the issues uppermost in the minds of
South Africans. You can find a written version
of this content on J .P.'s website, jplandman
.co .za. I am Ruda Landman, and I am your host.
This podcast goes with J .P.'s newsletter, dated
the 14th of October 2025. And the title is Project
Wollendlela. But before we come to that, JP,
it's been a while. Why the silence since, what
is it, July? Yes, we must apologize to our readers
and regular listeners for the long period of
silence. Basically two reasons. I fell ill with
pneumonia and couldn't shake it. That dragged
on and dragged on. And then I've been... very
busy and between those two impediments I can't
do couldn't do the kind of deep research that
I like to do when I do the compile the notes
so that's what happened my apologies but we're
all healthy now and happy and going on and here
we are with the next episode talking about Willem
Lela Well, there was also food poisoning while
you were on the road, poor thing. Yes, yes. I
was doing a roadshow and developed food poisoning
and that was extremely uncomfortable. So, yes,
all these things contributed. But fortunately,
that's now behind us. So, why Project Fullendlela?
It's been going for a while. Why do you want
to focus on it now? In one of the roadshows I
did in the last couple of weeks, we went around
the country and spoke to about nine or ten business
audiences. And I underlined the fact that they
were business audiences. And in each of those
meetings, I asked the audience members, do you
know about Project Will and Leila? Do you know
what it is? And to my shock and horror and amazement.
Very, very few people knew about it. In fact,
there were two of the towns and cities in which
we were, where nobody in the audience have heard
about Burundlela. And that made me realize that
it is such an important program. And that made
me realize that the ordinary business people
out there do not have, shall I say, sufficient
knowledge of what's going on. Why is Burundlela
important? It is the most meaningful economic
program by the government, economic policy program
by the government since 1996 when the GEER program
was launched. Since then, we've had many economic
programs. We've had ASGISA. We had the new economy
plan. In Zuma's time, there was the nine -point
plan. Then there was the National Development
Plan. And lately, in the last few weeks, the
ANC has released the 10 -point economic plan.
None of them are as comprehensive and as focused
on implementation. That's really the point, as
focused on implementation as the Volendela project.
And I thought it's important that we talk about
it. You go back to 2019 to find the origin. Absolutely.
In 2019, October 2019, it's now six years ago,
The then Minister of Finance, Titimo Bueni, released
an innocent -looking document from the National
Treasury, about 62, 63 pages, outlining changes
that have to happen in the economy, structural
change that must come in various areas. There
was a huge hullabaloo. The document was condemned
by some people as a sop. to new liberalism. It
was condemned by others as a rogue document.
Somebody said treasury has gone rogue. And yeah,
there was a huge reaction. A month later, Tito
Mubuweni went to the National Executive Committee
of the ANC. And he apologized that he released
this document before it was discussed internally
by the ANC. So clearly, he believed that it's
better to ask forgiveness later than to ask permission
up front. So that's the background. That was
in 2019. Sorry, but why? Why were people so shocked?
What was in the document that was so different?
As you will see when we go through the detail,
what it basically entailed is that room must
be made for the private sector. That's the big
organizing principle if you pull it through.
Room must be made for the private sector to come
into areas where traditionally there has been
government monopolies, like energy, for example,
like logistics, like water. And with that, the
private sector must also bring in capital and
management expertise. And that was quite an important
rubric online for many people in the ANC. Hard
for the ANC to make that shift. For some of them,
yes, absolutely. Clearly not for Mbueni and also
not for the government, because what happened
in 2020, we got COVID, the country went into
a lockdown. But then in October 2020, a year
after this rogue document was released, Government
released an economic reform and recovery program
to recover from COVID. And that program was basically
premised on the document released by Titimo Bovene
on the road document. And from then on, that
became official government policy, basically
from October 2020. And it was in the sonar, presidential
sonar of February 21, where Ramaphosa just slipped
in a little sentence in the speech to say that
this document is now official government policy.
And from there on, we had Willem Lela. What are
the focus areas? There are five of them. It is
electricity, spectrum release and digital communication.
Water, freight transport, that is railways and
ports, and number five, visa and skilled migration.
Now, you must remember this, we now talk about
2021, 2020, 2021. These issues then were very
prominent and paramount. Some of them still are.
And the point about Project Will and Leila was
it was a combined team of the presidency and
national treasury that worked together to drive
changes in these five areas through the government
bureaucracy. The word Will and Leila means make
way or open up. You know, it was get out of the
way. remove the constraint, remove the obstacle.
That's basically what the word means. Well, my
little bit of Zulu says, open the road, the way.
Well, there you are. There you are. That's a
very good description of what it is about. Point
number one was electricity. And that is probably
the one area that people know about. But summarize,
where were we with load shedding in 2021? It's
very important to remember that load shedding
was the big story. That was the big thing. We
had stage six load shedding in 2020. We had load
shedding virtually every day. So the first thing
that we worked on was to try and fix load shedding.
And the number of things were done. And today,
it's now 2025, we look back and the issue of
generating too little power. That is what load
shedding is. You generate too little power for
the need. That has been resolved. There may be
individual areas in the country where municipalities
have failed and there's load shedding or load
reduction, as it's now called, in those areas.
But the national problem of not producing enough
electricity has been resolved. But something
else happened in the process, and that is that
the electricity industry was completely deregulated.
Electricity used to be a state -run monopoly,
run by ESCOM. It's a system that developed over
many, many decades. It served the country well
until about 10, 15 years ago. And the rest of
the world has moved on to deregulated electricity
markets in one way or another. And with this
crisis of load shedding that we had in South
Africa, we've taken the gap to not just solve
the load shedding problem, but to reorganize,
deregulate electricity. And I think it's important
to do that just to understand how far this has
gone. We have the example of Richards Bay Minerals
in Richards Bay on the eastern side of the country.
They are now, it's a smelter. A smelter uses
a lot of electricity constantly. They now buy
70 % of the electricity from solar and wind producers
in the Western Cape. And then the electrons are
sent across the country to the eastern part of
Richards Bay. And they run a smelter on it. Not
exclusively, as I've said, 70 % of their power.
But, and this is the other important point, they
buy that power, they say, at about 70 % of the
tariff that ESCOM charges. So that's how far
this thing has developed. Just in the last two
weeks or so, we heard about Glencore, an international
mining company. who run coal mines in South Africa.
They have now signed an agreement to buy renewable
energy from solar and wind to run a coal mine.
Just think of the irony of that. Now, these things
were completely impossible three years ago, four
years ago. Couldn't happen. The law was against
it. The law has been changed. The regulations
have been changed. And a completely new dispensation
is evolving. Now, obviously... vested interest
in the old dispensation like ESCOM are not keen
and they're trying to resist and they're trying
to protect their position everybody will do that
but it's quite clear which way the trend is going
and the trend is away from from certainly a government
monopoly to private sector private enterprise
producing and selling electricity and the subsequent
trend is away from coal to produce electricity
to other sources of energy, like solar and wind
and so on. It's quite a magnificent change that's
happening in our country. And electricity is
such an important basic network industry. If
things go wrong there, it really circles out.
If things go right there, you have the opposite
kind of positive consequences. It also strikes
me that there's been a mind shift. almost a national
mind shift, that we no longer think that this
is weird. That's a very important point that
you're picking up on. Because we grew up, you
and me and our generation, we grew up with state
monopolies in certain areas. Electricity was
one, but also in logistics. You call it a state
monopoly, but from the recipient's point of view,
it was simply the state provides. Yes. Yes, exactly.
And that has now been broken and is being broken.
Look, it's a journey. We must accept that. It's
not happening overnight, but there's no question
about the change. There's no question about the
direction. There's no question about where we're
going. And that is Project Ruland Lela. Number
two on their list was Spectrum Release. And I
think we as the users don't really notice what
happened there. No, absolutely. Spectrum release
was on the agenda, was supposed to be done, and
was delayed for 10 years. Why was it delayed?
Well, first, there were lots of political wranglings,
particularly in a time of the Zuma administration.
And then when Ramaphosa took over and the politics
were sorted out, there were core challenges.
And so we had this ironical thing that... Virtually
everybody, three, four companies went to the
High Court to say that the conditions of spectrum
release, you know, are not fair to them. And
that was all resolved. And after the delay of
10 years, a spectrum auction took place in, I
think it was in March 2022, yes. And that spectrum
auction realized 14 and a half billion rand.
for the government fiscus, money which is obviously
welcome now for the fiscus. But the real point
for you and me is now that spectrum that was
released could now be used to introduce 4G and
5G. And if you now go across the country, you
know, 5G is very available, certainly 4G is,
and we've moved on from 2 and 3G where we were.
In fact, I think there's an effort going on by
the telcos to close down. 2G and 3G stations,
the public has moved on. So all this is possible.
4G and 5G, which will be of us for forever, has
been made possible because of digital spectrum
release. And that was one of the first wins or
victories that Volendela registered. And we've
now forgotten about it. But spectrum release
was certainly a big story. Number three on their
list is water. Has anything shifted? Because
once again, from the point of the consumer, it
looks a bit dire. Absolutely. And yes, to answer
your question, yes, things have shifted. Number
one, the Zuma administration in its time abolished
or suspended a water and sanitation measuring
system known as blue drop, green drop or no drop.
The logic was probably if you don't know about
a problem, the problem doesn't exist. This was
brought back by the Ramaphosa administration.
Those reports, we've now had the first versions
of those reports and obviously they make for
dire reading because the water and sanitation
and loss problem, as we know, drop comes in.
Losses are quite high and we know there's a problem,
but now at least we know it. And what you measure,
what you know, you can manage. That's the first
one. The second thing is we now have 11 projects
going on countrywide. to a tune of about 156
billion rand to have bigger bulk water supply.
So you start at the top, you aggregate water,
you have bulk water supply, and now you must
distribute it to various municipalities and so
on. So our problem now lies with distribution
by municipalities. They will say, we didn't know
what was going on, so you started measuring.
Then you worked on bulk water that is now in
process and being fixed. Now you've got distribution
by municipalities, which is currently the big
problem. And there are two interesting initiatives
going on. The first one is to ring fence water,
also electricity, but let's talk about water,
to ring fence water activities inside municipalities
as a separate utility, so that the money that
comes in from water is put back into water, into
maintenance, into infrastructure, into proper
billing, that sort of thing. So this is what
Will and Leila is now working on, is the ring
fencing of water supply. Because previously that
money has been used to pay other salaries. Absolutely.
It went into the general income of a municipality
and it was spent on general expenses. And we
know that municipalities overspend on things
like salaries, obviously patronage, that sort
of thing. And this will help to curb that. The
second change that is taking place, and I think
it's a big one, again, it will take time, is
to distinguish in a municipality between the
constitutional obligations of a municipality
to be a water service authority. What is a water
service authority? They must make sure that the
citizens in their area are serviced, that they
are not overcharged, that the poor gets their
proper share, and so on and so forth. But you
separate those obligations from being a water
service provider. The provider is the one that
must lay the pipes, make sure they work, issue
bills, collect the money, and so on. Do the actual
work. Do the actual work. Now, in South Africa,
the 250 -odd municipalities we have do both.
They're the water service authority, but they're
also a water service provider. There are only
two exceptions to that. And the one is the Dolphin
Coast, on the Dolphin Coast in KwaZulu -Natal.
And the other one is in Mpumalanga. There, they've
already separated the delivery of water from
the responsibility for water. One is a political
function, the other one is a management function.
So the idea is to bring that across the whole
country. Now, obviously, municipalities don't
like this. Obviously, they will resist it. But
obviously, they will have to come along. because
there's a fiscal crisis developing around municipalities
not paying for water. And again, it's quite clear
in which way the direction is. And that's an
important follow -up work that Wurundjela is
doing now. Now, obviously, you can't tackle 250
-odd municipalities simultaneously. So Wurundjela
is now focusing on six of the country's eight
metros to help them to get their water function
re -established, ring -fenced with proper management
and running it. It also, with the separation
of water authorities and water providers, there's
also a licensing regime that is brought in with
standards that must be met by the provider. And
if the provider doesn't meet those standards,
the license can get cancelled and can be given
to somebody else. So you can take the license
away from a municipality as a water provider
and give it to a private company or a not -for
-profit NGO or a community -based organization.
These changes are now possible. The Water Act
is being amended to make that possible. Point
number four on the Wollendlella list, freight
transport, rail and ports. We hear quite a lot
about that, but how far is the process? Let's
separate railways from ports. Again, the organizing
principle is that you want to bring in private
companies on running certain railway lines, railway
sectors, and also private companies to run ports.
On the railway side, after a long period of delay
and preparatory work that had to be done, you
must remember, Ruda, we've had the government
run rail services for the best part of 150 years.
So you now have to change that whole system.
And you have to take out the inherent conflicts
of interest. You cannot expect a private sector
to come in and run a particular railway line
if they are not sufficiently protected and independent
from transnet unfair competition. So you had
to establish a railway regulator. You had to
break transnet railways up between an asset manager
and an operating company. These kinds of preparatory
works take time. They require legislative changes,
accounting changes and so on. But that has now
progressed to the point where 11 sectors have
been put up for bidding by the private sector.
More than 50 companies applied. Some 25 were
selected. And those 25 are now negotiating with
Transnet, with the infrastructure manager. to
lease these railway lines, what the conditions
will be, who will take what responsibility, where
the risk will lie and so on. And what will happen,
which is busy happening, these companies interested
in doing the business will either rent railway
stock from Transnet or they will bring in new
stock from overseas. Apparently a contract has
been signed to bring rolling stock in from Australia.
So the companies will bring their rolling stock,
they will pay a fee, the fee will go into infrastructure
investment, and that way you want to resuscitate
the railway system. With that, a second tender
has been put out by Transnet for railway sidings
to be taken over by private operators, private
people, to run the sidings. Now, you know, if
you go through the country, we see a sorry sight
of a lot of sidings that have been... just dilapidated
and neglected. So it's an effort to turn that
around. Because efficient sidings mean you can
park trains, let other trains park, you can offload
cargo. It makes for more flexibility in the system.
That's why you have them in the first place.
And the fact that they went to wreck and ruin
actually undermines the operation of the entire
system. How many little blocks that go into building
this tower? And I think that's a very important
point. It is not... You can't just do a big bang.
It's not like just abolishing prices or abolishing
exchange control. That's a big bang. You can
do it one night, government gazette, done. Here
you have to move a lot of small parts and bring
them all aligned. And that's happening. So some
people say it's happening too slow. That may
be. But, you know, you must work with what you
have. Just before we leave the railway lines,
this is not part of Volendela, but Praza is also
recording some interesting progress. And I think
our listeners must just take note of that. In
a future research piece, we may deal with that.
So those are the railway lines. What's happening
on ports is similar logic. Bring the private
sector in. Now, the big one was Durban, Durban
Pier 2. That's South Africa's largest harbour.
Transnet has given a concession to a Philippine
company to run it. Well, first there was a bidding
process. It was given to a Philippine company,
one of the biggest port operators in the world.
One of the companies that lost, I think, a mask,
then took the case to the High Court. And that's
caused a two -year delay. Now, you know, in the
ideal world, you don't want such a delay. quick
decisions, if possible, no court decisions. But
that's how it is. And we're now through it. The
High Court has ruled in favor of Transnet. The
Philippine company can now take control of Durban
Harbor and do the investment and train the people.
So that has already progressed. But then similar
outsourcing tenders have been released for Richards
Bay, for the Cougar Harbor in the Eastern Cape.
And now also for some activities in the Cape
Town Harbour for LNG facilities. We will have
to import gas in the near future to supplement
our energy supply. The more you do renewables,
the more you need gas to even out the intermittency
of renewables. But for that you need gas. And
so we will build LNG terminals and bids for that
has gone out. So you can see it's the same story.
Open up where Transnet used to do everything.
Open up, let private companies come in. They
must bid competitively and they must bring capital.
And I think this is important. Nothing is being
privatized. It's the misconception that these
things means privatization. What is privatization?
It's a change in ownership. There's no change
in ownership. Transnet remains the owner of the
property. Think of it as a house that you own.
You get a new tenant. The tenant comes in and
fixes your house. He uses his money to fix your
house. And then he still pays rent as well. I
mean, how is that not a good deal for the homeowner?
But it's also a good deal for the guy who wants
accommodation and wants to, maybe a house is
not the right example. Well, maybe he rents out
the rooms to students. Maybe he rents out the
rooms to students. Absolutely. So he can use
it to make money. And that's what's happening
here. And then the fifth one on the list, visas
and skilled migration. Yeah, we all know about
the progress that has been made there. The new
Minister of Home Affairs has really rattled the
cage. I think a lot of that is work that was
done by his predecessor and he was happy, he
was lucky enough to reap the rewards. I think
one must say that. But the fact is it's happening
and it's changing the way we're dealing with
visas. It's changing the way in which we can
accommodate tourists. The work is not completed
yet. It will carry on. But the big thing, the
big aim is to make it easier for skilled people
to come here, make it easier for remote workers
to come and work here and service their clients
in the US or Europe or wherever. And the third
one, of course, is tourism. And if we can get
those things right, you can unlock a huge number
of jobs and economic growth. So you summarize
this actually under the heading from a developmental
state to a partnership state. Yeah. And what
my thinking was there, and you would notice there's
a question mark because I think it's not definite,
but my thinking is as follows. Since it has come
into power, the ANC has worked with the concept
of a developmental state. And they basically
got it from Southeast Asia, from South Korea,
Taiwan, and, of course, China, who are the prime
examples of a developmental state. And the ANC
tried to copy that here. I think it's safe to
say that we know it didn't work. The idea of
a developmental state is that you take an SOE,
a government company, a government enterprise,
and they must drive developmental work. How much
developmental work has come out of ESCOM? How
much has come out of Transnet? How much has come
out of our water authorities? How much has come
out of our very dysfunctional municipalities?
So I think what we're seeing here is a collapse,
if I may use that word, of the notion of a developmental
state and a move over to a partnership state
where you bring people into traditional state
functions. You don't privatize, you concession
and you liberalize. I think liberalize is a much
better word than privatization. And they now
coming, private sector players are now coming
into areas where the state used to be. And to
do that, they have to work together. They have
to develop a common understanding of where's
risk, where's reward. Who's taking responsibility
for what? It is a coexistence. It's not a single
existence. So I think politically speaking, what
we're seeing is a move from developmental state
to a partnership state. And that's a very new
direction in our politics. We have a completely
new dispensation since last year's election.
Did that upset the apple cart? No, not at all.
It reinforced the apple cart. The program that
we've discussed in this podcast so far was started
by the previous administration, the sixth administration.
They launched Wallenlela. They launched the five
areas. And that was basically the ANC. They had
a majority. They were governing. Correct. And
so they must get the credit for it and where
people want to blame, they blame. The government
of National Unity, first of all, endorsed that.
The DA in particular was quite keen on Wollendlela.
And the government of National Unity has now
launched Wollendlela 2. What is Wollendlela 2?
It is a continuation of the work that is not
finished yet from Wollendlela 1, like water,
for example, and electricity, the development
of electricity market and so on. But the Government
of National Unity has added three items to Wurundlela
II. The first one is municipalities, local government.
How you fix that, I don't know. That's going
to be a very hard nut to crack. But it's there,
it's the priority, and they've started working
on that. The second one is what is called spatial
inequality. The fact that we still have the legacy
of group areas, and we have a lot of particularly
working class people living very far away from
the places of work, which is the opposite of
what you find in a... normal city, if I can put
it that way. So there are concrete things that
can be done there. And most important is suburban
transport. In other words, railway lines and
bus lines. And in these, these things are part
of the Villanueva program under the item of spatial
inequality. Also release land where it's possible
for access by poor people. And then the third
one added by the government of national unity,
is a transformation to a digital governance.
And the idea is that every citizen must have
a digital ID and all interactions with the government
is via that digital portal. There are countries
using that and the roadmap must now be developed
for South Africa to do that. That's detailed.
The point is those three areas. Local government.
digital and spatial inequality have been added
by the Government of National Unity to Wollonglela.
Wollonglela is now housed in the presidency and
a project team in the presidency is driving the
implementation. Can this make a difference to
our dismal growth rate? Well, that's the whole
reason why we're doing it, is to try and improve
growth and with that, jobs. And the Bureau for
Economic Research at Stellenbosch released last
year a very important research paper in which
they modeled the impact of these changes that
Willem Lela is striving for. And the impact is
that over a period of two, three years, growth
can move from 1 % now to 3 .5 % in two or three
years' time. They have since updated their work
and they're more or less sticking with that timeline.
take a year or so longer. Trump's tariffs of
course will cause a delay and other things may
cause a delay but there's no doubt about it that
the dividend will come through and that ties
up with what we know. You look around the world
when governments embark on structural reform
you get a productivity improvement and then growth
and a classic example is India. India for many,
many years after independence had a very low
growth rate, 1 % thereabouts. Then Mohammed Singh
became Minister of Finance and India ran into
a big foreign currency crisis and a budget crisis.
And he said, well, we can't carry on like this.
We've done it now for a couple of decades. And
he launched big economic reforms. He then became
Prime Minister, Mr. Singh, and carried on with
the reforms. He passed away the other day. His
government was replaced by the current Modi government.
Modi is pursuing it further and India's growth
rates now are spectacular. So I don't think India
ever used the word Project Villain Leela. You
know, that was not there. But it's the same kind
of thing. You open up the economy. What was called
a Raj economy was transformed by Mohammed Singh
through structural reform. And that's what's
happening here. in South Africa now. So yes,
you look at India, you look at other countries,
when you do structural reform, there's a productivity
increase and there's a growth dividend. And that's
the way I think this one will play out. In summary,
so what? The key point about Volunt Leela is
it's not another policy paper. It's about implementation.
And there's a huge difference. So we've had,
as I've said in the beginning, several policy
papers. This one is about implementation, and
we can see from the record that there are actual
practical results coming out. So that's one.
I think it's important for business people in
particular to take note of what's happening with
Will and Leila. The fact that in nine cities
and towns across the country, very few people
knew about it, I think is perturbing. And taking
the trouble to understand more about what's happening.
will be good for confidence. And let's face it,
the smart money is already there. Those entrepreneurs
who are tendering for railway lines, tendering
for contracts in the harbors, in the ports, the
people who are investing in 4G and 5G, the smart
entrepreneurs are out there. Smart money is out
there. Don't be left behind. I think the third
so what, as you put it, there's lots of small
pieces that must be put together. It's a journey.
It's not a big bang. It's not a one -eyed stand,
if I can put it that way. This is a long -term
marriage that you have to work through. And we
must have the patience with that. Then there's
the point that I think we are moving from a developmental
state to a partnership state. I really think
that's in progress. Now, of course, the politicos
will argue about this and so on. ANC stalwarts
will say no no no the state must remain in control
and on the other side right wingers will say
everything must be privatized leave that aside
for the big majority of people in the middle
I think this shift from developmental to partnership
is a shift that fits in with the mood in the
country It fits in with the GNU. And I think
that's the way the country is moving from developmental
to partnership. Thank you very much. Most interesting.
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