PRASA devolution “just ’round the corner” for four years now

Cape Town’s four-year campaign to beg the national government for control of PRASA’s passenger rail network has followed a rather dull and repetitive rhythm: bold promises of devolution, glacial and extremely hesitant national response, and a great deal of talking.

The latest release is a fantasy vision statement, hailed as a “milestone”. Of course, national government is still promising nothing, and the DA are still using no more leverage than pathetic begging and matronly finger-wagging.

It began in 2021, fifteen years after the DA took the City, and PRASA was already in advanced stages of decline. Geordin Hill-Lewis, newly installed as mayor the following year, was facing pressure from the Cape independence movement which, though still untested in its newer formation, was riding high polling results. It had managed to secure a working group with the provincial government which included AfriForum and Ian Cameron’s Action Society. Pretty soon, the DA needed to look serious about devolution or risk people realising that they effectively endorsed ANC government.

Hill-Lewis lodged an official application. National Treasury obligingly funded a feasibility study in 2022. Cabinet’s White Paper that year endorsed the principle of handing rail to “capable metros”, provided a formal Devolution Strategy was produced by 2023. It was not.

Deadlines slipped. The strategy became a draft in 2024, then part of a broader Rail Master Plan promised for late 2025. Ministers came and went. Fikile Mbalula in 2023 declared devolution premature. Sindisiwe Chikunga repeated the line. Barbara Creecy, appointed after the 2024 election, proved marginally more receptive but still insisted PRASA must first restore services to 2012 levels, a target it has conspicuously failed to meet.

The only tangible concession arrived in December 2024: a Service Level Plan between PRASA and the City. This obliged PRASA to share data, accept joint monitoring, and meet modest performance targets. Cape Town hailed it as the foundation for eventual devolution. PRASA immediately clarified that it was nothing of the sort, merely enhanced cooperation under existing national legislation. A 2025 amendment to the Service Level Plan fixed clerical errors and set up a steering committee, but changed little else.

Recently, the City completed its own business case, costed at R123 billion over thirty years, largely to be borne by the national fiscus. It narrowed options to three models, all involving private operation and eventual municipal ownership of rolling stock and stations.

Pretoria’s response has been to nod politely while continuing to insist that infrastructure remains a national asset and that any transfer must await the Rail Master Plan, still unpublished as of December 2025. Progress, measured in powers actually transferred, stands at zero. What exists is a thin promise of intergovernmental partnership: data swaps, joint patrols, shared spreadsheets, but no meaningful devolution even in the form of a service-level agreement.

The ANC appears willing to let the Democratic Alliance spend political capital on plans and press releases, while retaining full legal and financial control.

In the meantime, eye-rolling at every one of the DA’s interminable “success” messages is getting very tiresome.