MEDIA STATEMENT

SANRAL Statement on The Recent Article About its Executives

The South African National Roads Agency SOC Limited (SANRAL) has noted with grave concern a recent article masquerading as expert analysis of the national roads agency. Appearing in some obscure online publication called Politics Publication in a dubious and recently established website, its misguided assertions cannot go unchallenged.

The article is titled “Vacuum Leadership, A Flood of Corruption” and is by-lined by someone called Investigative Desk. The latter already gives it away. No name but a faceless Investigate Desk. What follows thereafter are sweeping statements and generalisations (we would not even call it editorialising) about the road agency’s state of affairs, including its leadership, without providing any evidence. It is a piece of writing that constitutes a serious dereliction of journalistic duty expected of any professional media practitioner.

The article starts off by stating that SANRAL, “once entrusted with the stewardship of the nation’s arterial road network, has become a cautionary tale of squandered potential” and that “what was meant to be a beacon of infrastructure development has instead descended into scandal, incompetence and corruption”.

Impressive English but baseless alarmist turns of phrase. At the heart of this imagined collapse, the article contends, stand SANRAL’s Chief Executive Officer Reginald Demana, Chief Planning and Design Engineer Louw Kannemeyer and the Chief Construction, Operations and Maintenance Engineer, Dumisani Nkabinde. These are professionals whose track record and credentials pale those of the faceless Investigate Desk into insignificance.

Let us start with Demana. He is a former divisional executive of a leading development finance institution, has worked as CEO of a listed coal mining group, a mining adviser at a major bank and an analyst at a securities firm. Hardly the stuff incompetence is made of. Among his achievements while at SANRAL, is the stabilisation of the entity’s finances, especially its toll portfolio.

Kannemeyer has been with SANRAL since inception on 1 April 1998 and was part of the team that established SANRAL as the Network Manager responsible for the strategic management of the country’s national road network. Proper investigation of Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA) public website would have shown that Kannemeyer is an ECSA Registered Professional Engineer since 1997 (Reg No 970437). Investigate Desk refers to him as Executive for Engineering (instead of his correct title which is Chief Planning and Design Engineer) and is obviously oblivious if not ignorant of the role he has played in the development and upkeep of South Africa’s admired national road network. So much for an Investigative Desk.

Nkabinde joined SANRAL in 2007 as a Project Manager, was promoted to Operations and Maintenance Manager in 2016 in the Eastern Region and later as the Regional Manager for the same region. In March 2024 he was appointed as Chief Construction, Operations and Maintenance Engineer. Boasting years of experience in the civil and construction sectors, Nkabinde has served on international platforms such as the World Road Association’s committee that rewrote global standards for road and bridge construction.

We could say more about these three professionals, their competence and achievements but Investigative Desk will probably not allow the facts to stand in the way of its preconceived “analysis” – if it could be called that.

The article further contends that SANRAL’s failures have “left scars on the public psyche”, transforming the agency from a symbol of national progress into a cautionary tale of institutional decay. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In this regard, we are compelled to highlight the following key facts and strides that have been achieved by SANRAL over the last financial year:

With a national road network of 27 478km that is currently valued at R780 billion, SANRAL’s high impact road infrastructure development projects continue to create jobs and contribute to the country’s economic growth. During the last financial year, over 35 000 job opportunities were created for local communities and over 2 000 SMMEs benefitted through subcontracting opportunities on the road agency’s major construction projects. If this has “left scars on the public psyche”, we plead guilty!

To the contrary, the impact this has achieved is that SANRAL’s projects have become a conduit to facilitate the country’s economic growth and bringing economic opportunities in order to change people’s lives, particularly the previously disadvantaged individuals of our society.

Moreover, major SANRAL projects that are currently underway continue to progress rapidly with significant improvement. To illustrate, these projects include, among others:

• The N2 Wild Coast Road Project in the Eastern Cape, which has a total budget of R28 billion. The project has set aside R4 billion for expenditure in local communities, and includes the Msikaba Bridge, which spans the Msikaba Gorge near Lusikisiki, and the Mtentu Bridge near Lundini in the Eastern Cape.

 

• The Msikaba Bridge, currently under construction, is a cable-stayed bridge featuring a 580-meter main span, 127-meter-tall, inverted Y-shaped pylons, and a deck 194 meters above the valley floor. It is set to be the longest main span cable-stayed bridge in Africa, as well as one of the highest in Africa overall. We contend this engineering feat is not going to leave scars on the nation’s psyche but will grab public imagination – nationally, on the African continent and internationally. Indeed, as the bridge takes shape, it has already featured on National Geographic’s Building Impossible television show.

 

• The Mtentu Bridge is a 1,132-meter-long box girder bridge designed to be Africa’s highest and one of the world’s longest balanced cantilever bridges, featuring a 260-meter main span and a total height of 223 meters over the Mtentu River. Again, we submit, such a major project and the continuing execution thereof are the direct opposite of the SANRAL described in Investigative Desk’s shoddy journalism.

 

• A total budget of R11,5 billion has been set aside for the Moloto Road upgrade project. The project traverses Gauteng, Mpumalanga, and Limpopo provinces. Completion of Section 3 of the project, between Slovo and Siyabuswa in Limpopo, represents a significant improvement in road safety and connectivity for road users in the area. Nearly 400 local labourers got job opportunities on Section 3 of the project.

 

• The approximately R5 billion upgrade of the strategically important Huguenot tunnel in the Western Cape connects the ports of Cape Town and Saldanha to the inland provinces.

 

• About 81 local job opportunities were created in the Musina Ring Road project in Limpopo. About 20 local SMMEs were appointed as contractors and 132 people were trained in the project, and a total of R28 million was spent on local goods and services.

 

• A total of 92 full-time equivalent jobs – with R16 million spent – have been created in the construction of the Thembalethu Bridge in George in the Western Cape. The total of R31 million on awarded contracts translated into 144 local labourers receiving skills training – with R1 million spent – and 22 local subcontractors have been used on the project, and

 

• On the N2/N3 freeway upgrade project, which is currently underway in KwaZulu-Natal, 15 000 job opportunities are expected to be created, with R3,8 billion expected to be spent on local labour and R14,4 billion expected to be spent on black owned enterprises.

With an unqualified audit for the 2024/25 financial year, SANRAL’s operating expenditure is at R23,71 billion. Capital expenditure stands at R18,526 billion, while its net asset balance was at R783,325 billion as at the end of the 2024/5 financial year. Moreover, SANRAL has collected toll fees revenue of R4,908 billion and received an increase in government grant totalling R26,307 billion. This is in addition to its earned investment income of R5,288 billion.

With 3 099km of roads transferred by provinces, this means that SANRAL has a total of 59 roads capital projects, 62 major projects on non-toll roads, 44 operational expenditure projects, and 110 routine road maintenance projects across the country. This demonstrates its commitment to use the revenue it receives to build better roads. At a recent (November 2025) NCOP oversight of a road (R540) transferred from the Mpumalanga province to SANRAL, the provincial government and the province’s tourism sector were full of praise for the interventions SANRAL has made.

Investigative Desk does not see all this work and impact. Instead, it sees “scars on the public psyche”. It is here that we pause and wonder: does Investigative Desk and its Politics Publication live in the real world or in cloud cuckoo land?

South Africa recently hosted, and successfully so, the G20 Summit. Investigative Desk may not be aware that SANRAL was given the responsibility to ensure that, working with the other spheres of government, the roads were in a good condition. It is a task SANRAL diligently fulfilled right from the beginning of the year as the G20 preparatory meetings started being convened in the country. Road infrastructure was key in delivering a successful summit. SANRAL was part of the collective effort, and its participation did not leave “scars on the public psyche” but ensured South Africans felt a sense of pride for having delivered a successful summit.

Finally, at its recent Annual General Meeting (which, admittedly, Investigative Desk was not privy to), the shareholder minister expressed her satisfaction with how the entity has been governed by the outgoing Board and led by Demana at management level.

SANRAL will not be sidetracked by the work of agent provocateurs but will continue with its mandate of building and maintaining the national road network and consequently improving the socio-economic conditions of South Africans.

 

-ENDS-