South Africa’s disintegrating freight railway is crippling firms

The roads in the north of Kwa-Zulu Natal (KZN), South Africa’s second-most-populated province, were once sedate. Lorries carrying timber or sugar cane from nearby plantations would trundle past, overtaken occasionally by tourists heading to game reserves. But these days hundreds of trucks laden with coal roar through small towns on their way to the port of Richards Bay. In September one lorry rammed into a pickup in the oncoming lane, killing 20 passengers, near the town of Pongola. “Our roads aren’t meant for this amount of traffic,” says Mike Patterson, from the local chamber of commerce. “The coal should be taken by rail.”