DEVELOPMENT OF COASTAL SHIPPING
2.9 CONCLUSION
The chapter began with a discussion of the early history of coastal shipping. The narrative of 11th century Southern African routes shows coastal shipping that was buoyed by the trade of the Arab Muslims with the coastal and river merchants of Great Zimbabwe and the people of the eastern seaboard islands. South Africa and Mozambique did not exist. Borders of these and other countries are postcolonial constructs. Nevertheless, evidence exists to suggest that foreign traders were not only welcomed to areas located in modern Southern Africa but that integration between foreign traders and locals was sufficiently intimate and sustained long enough to produce shared values.150 Therefore, Southern African precolonial history shows no evidence of coastal discriminatory practices. Similarly, nothing suggests that Arab traders or local traders or both as an amalgamation sought to exclude others from coastal routes. Therefore, cabotage does not appear to have been practised over this period.
147 A joint venture that started in 2008 with Calulo Services (Pty) Ltd.
148 Unicorn Bunkers, available at http://www.grindrod.co.za/Company/28/Unicorn-Bunkers. (Accessed 21 July 2017).
149 The company operates three South African registered vessels; two service BP/Engen in Durban and the third vessel services Astron Energy in Cape Town. See https:/linsennambi.com/about-bunker- services, accessed 17 February 2020.
150 Swahili became a coastal trader’s language that flourished since then. Today Swahili has its own news channel on BBC NEWS, available at https://www.bbc.com/swahili/dira-tv-48275890. (Accessed 17 May 2019).
The arrival of the Dutch during the 17th century may have expanded trade along the coast, especially the slave trade. However, vessels of various flags plied the Southern African coast equally exposed to capture, cargo theft, piracy and other plundering methods of the time. There were no restrictions with regard to who might trade on the coast apart from European territorial conquests between the Dutch, the English and the Portuguese, which determined who ruled the conquered coast and who was excluded.
British colonisation of the Cape led to the development of predominantly English coastal settlements. British domination spread from the southernmost tip of Africa further into the interior and paved the way for the development of coastal shipping fleets, ports, and other coastal infrastructure. The chapter shows a chronological development of the coast and features the dominant characters. It also highlights events that shaped coastal shipping such as economic downturns, market crashes, World Wars, government-sanctioned anti-coastal shipping policies and a political climate averse to trade and other coastal development. The entire development was almost exclusively driven by British men loyal to England. It was not driven by locals for the development of South Africa.
It is important to note that British policy151 over this period was that cargo to and from British Colonies had to be carried on British vessels.152 The effect of this was that all cargo to or from the Cape and Natal was exclusively reserved for carriage by British fleets. Therefore, it was British colonisation of South Africa that introduced cabotage on the coast. However, Natal attempted colonial cabotage towards the middle of the 19th century. The colony wanted to see local cargo carried exclusively by local vessels.
The attempt resulted in the formation of D’Urban Shipping Company. However, efforts for this exclusivity amounted to naught. After that, cabotage never really took root in the colonies.
The chapter then tracks coastal shipping at the end of colonial South Africa. It has been pointed out that at the beginning of the 18th century, Britain was one of the sea powers
151 Navigation Acts applied between 1651 and 1853 and the Merchant Shipping Act of 1869. For a full treatise, see Bruce Farthing International Shipping: An Introduction to the Policies, Politics and Institutions of the Maritime World (1987). See also A. Berriedale Keith ‘Merchant Shipping Legislation in the Colonies’ Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation
Vol. 9, No. 2 (1908), pp. 202-222 (21 pages).
152 It is therefore unsurprising that a voyage from the Cape to Britain was known as the “homebound”
voyage because a vessel bound for Britain was going home, where it was flagged.
but that at the end of the century, Britain “was the sea power”.153 It was from this position of strength that Britain abandoned cabotage and any form of coastal restrictions during the middle of the 19th century. British shipowners wanted freedom to trade with vessels from anywhere.154
Expansion of dominance over coastal colonies was thereafter practised without any policy restrictions, through pure market control. This dominance meant that on becoming independent at the beginning of the 20th century, the Union had to rely on a variety of international fleets operating in a market environment controlled by the British. For the coast, British control of international carriage predicated British control of coastal transshipments. The Union’s OFA contracts bound it to internationally- flagged fleets that also controlled coastal transshipments, particularly between colonies.
In the process the Union acquiesced in the suppression of local coasters.
The Union had no room to suggest policies that would restrict coastal access to international vessels. Therefore, once Britain had abandoned coastal restrictions, its former colony, which did not have shipping capacity, could not advocate cabotage. The Union instead implemented stifling policies and tariff structures that deliberately undermined coastal shipping (such as the SCRR) which were introduced early in the 19th century and subsisted well into the middle of the century. These policies were ruinous to coastal enterprises owned by South Africans.
The new Republic of South Africa was formed in the 1960s. Like the Union before it, the Republic did not promote coastal shipping. Instead it focused its energy on supporting its hinterland developmental policies in favour of rail while actively suppressing coastal shipping and other modes of transport. Hopes of a South African- owned coastal fleet were raised when Safmarine bought Thesens in 1967. However, Safmarine soon after sold Thesens for a share in Unicorn Shipping. South African coastal shipping history leading up the late 1970s shows that the country never had an appetite for cabotage. Cabotage practice introduced by the British at the beginning of the 19th century (as reflected in the Navigation Acts and subsequently in the Merchant Shipping Act of 1869) was abolished and replaced by British market-share control in a new, restriction-free coastal environment.
153 Farthing (note 152) 10.
154 Ibid.
Section B of the chapter covers coastal shipping history over the modern era at the beginning of a containerised shipping. During this period the presence of international vessels on the South African coast (which were increasingly non-British) was a familiar sight. These vessels utilised Durban as the terminal port, where cargo would then be transshipped to destination ports along the African seaboard. Over the next two decades transshipment services operated through feeder operations saw significant growth in coastal shipping.
Unicorn Lines dominated coastal services and feeder services after its coastal business take-over bid during 1966 to 1983. However, the government exercised cargo reservation over state cargo, particularly coal, which was only carried by SAR ships.
Lack of demand for coal led to the demise of SAR ships. Unicorn Lines became the only coastal operator from 1985. From then, South African coastal shipping was characterised by Unicorn Lines’ rise to prominence as a single coaster which saw the company with a fleet of 19 ships and listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in 1986 under its new parent company, Grindrod.
In the new millennium Unicorn Lines had to contend with the effects of economic sanctions, global recession and the abolition of the road permit system, which trimmed company revenues. Grindrod moved its core operations offshore, thus removing its vessels from the South African register. However, Grindrod continued to ply its trade on the coast and expanded its operations further up the west coast to Luanda and up the east coast to Kenya.
The positivity that came with a new political dispensation in 1994 generally stimulated trade and coastal cargo. However, the Unicorn Lines coastal fleet did not return to the South African register. No new ship-owning enterprises have emerged either to join or to compete with Grindrod since then. Currently Grindrod maintains its presence on the coast through OACL and Unicorn Shipping. Unicorn Lines flags the fleet of about 42 vessels under its control in jurisdictions where favourable employment and convenient operating conditions exist. Similarly, the OACL fleet is not registered in South Africa.
In the context of this study, it must be borne in mind that Grindrod’s continued ability to trade on the coast using a fleet that is not registered in South Africa and the freedom afforded other foreign-flagged vessels to operate on the coast continues by virtue of the fact that there is no cabotage in South Africa. Therefore, the government seeks to
reserve coastal trade to South African-registered ships. This premise forms the basis for cabotage, which is central to the South African maritime policy.
The history of coastal shipping provides a canvas against which the development of maritime policy in South Africa ought to be understood. It also shows why South Africa has not adopted cabotage over the years. The effect of the absence of a domestically- registered fleet lies at the core of the reasons for the government’s eagerness to change maritime policy. The next chapter discusses the development of the policy itself.