Breaking the Silence

Every year I come to Automechanika, and every year I feel less like a CEO and more like a pastor. Not a priest. A pastor. The kind who comes down off the stage and walks the aisle.

I could stand here and tell you what you already know. But you know which policies are broken. You know your margins. You know which brands come back on a tow truck. You don’t need me to read you the news.

So let me say something else. This industry doesn’t have a knowledge problem. It has a silence problem.

The people in this room see it first. The workshop sees the fault. The supplier watches the order book shrink. The fleet owner knows exactly how many more fuel increases the business can survive. Too often, we see it, we know it, and we keep quiet. Like ostriches, we bury our heads in the sand, waiting for someone else to fix it.

But the truth is that nobody is coming to save you.

We’ve reached a defining crossroads in this industry. Today, I would like us to confront three uncomfortable truths to save our industry.

The Mirage of the Chinese Import Wave

The first truth is the impact of the massive wave of Chinese vehicle imports flooding South Africa.

Chinese brands now account for more than 19% of all new vehicle sales in the country. They arrive with sleek, aggressive styling, panoramic sunroofs, voice-activated cockpits, and dazzling digital screens. On paper, they look like an affordable miracle.

I am not here to say every Chinese car is flawed. I have nothing against vehicles imported from China. They are innovators doing serious engineering. But I am here to tell you that South African consumers are being treated as guinea pigs for products that have not earned the right to be trusted with human lives.

Consider the data. When consumer journalist Wendy Knowler investigated the National Consumer Commission’s vehicle recall registers, she uncovered something extraordinary. In 2025, the NCC processed 57 official safety recalls across our market. Australia, a market twice our size, issued 135. Recalls are not a corporate scandal; they are proof that consumer protection mechanisms are doing their job.

Yet, across a brand collective that captures nearly one-fifth of our national new vehicle market, almost none appeared on that register.

Are these cars built so impeccably that they defy the laws of mechanical engineering? Or are our consumers simply being kept in the dark?

We know the answer. The NCC confirmed that Chery, the dominant force in this import wave, has been executing what can only be described as “silent recalls.”

On the Tiggo 8 Pro Max, a critical brake pipe campaign affected nearly 3,500 vehicles—more than 30%  of every unit sold in South Africa. A brake clip can fail, allowing the brake line to shift directly against the turbo’s scorching exhaust housing. That is not an annoying rattle; that is a potential catastrophic brake loss and fire. 

Chery quietly sent an internal circular to dealers telling them to treat it as a priority. But they never issued an open, public safety recall to the drivers of those cars. Over 2,100 of those vehicles remained on our public roads, carrying families at 120 km/h, with owners completely unaware their brakes were compromised.

And this is not an isolated incident. At the Automobile Association, we blew the whistle on Jetour, another Chery Group brand. They magically increased the payload rating on their T1 and T2 models from 300 kilograms to 475 kilograms, a 58% quantum leap on paper, without upgrading a single bolt, spring, or mechanical component. When the AA insisted on an independent weighbridge test alongside the NRCS, the vehicle failed the test right before our eyes. Yet those vehicles were already being advertised and sold.

Now let’s look across our oceans to Malaysia. On the 6th of October, an Omoda 5 was driving through Johor Bahru when its entire rear axle detached cleanly from the chassis. Unlike our authorities, the Malaysian Road Transport Department did not negotiate. It immediately suspended the type approval for pre-facelift petrol Omoda 5s across 8,800 vehicles while investigations unfolded.

In South Africa? Deafening silence. Some of you probably drove an Omoda C5 here.

Established Japanese and European automakers spent over a century refining manufacturing tolerances, metallurgy, and stress testing. In those mature supply chains, catastrophic mechanical defect rates sit at roughly one in ten thousand. In our workshops and roadside recovery logs today, we are seeing component defect and failure patterns from certain new import stables approaching alarming rates.

These are not toasters, guys. They are two-ton steel projectiles carrying our children. If I put a sticker on a windscreen that said: “There is an unacceptably high chance this vehicle will suffer a major mechanical failure or safety defect,” would you buy it? Would you let your daughter drive it?

And we must also heed a broader economic warning. Look at Thailand. Thailand opened its borders to massive Chinese EV import subsidies without safeguarding its local manufacturing ecosystem.

In four short years, Chinese brands seized 85% of their EV market. The result? Suzuki and Subaru closed their manufacturing plants. Dozens of Tier Two and Tier Three domestic component suppliers went bankrupt. Skilled artisans who spent decades crafting exhaust systems and chassis components are now earning $11 a day packing shelves at supermarkets. Thailand’s chief economic planner had to publicly admit: “We did not think of the full picture.” South Africa is no exception.

If we don’t demand strict local homologation, real weighbridge verifications, transparent recall compliance, and reciprocal industrial value, South Africa will blindly follow the same path.

Mobility in a World of Fuel Hyperinflation

Which brings me to our second crisis: mobility in a world strangled by hyperinflation in fuel prices.

A few weeks ago, Elon Musk stood up in California and captivated global headlines with visions of flying autonomous cars. It was a dazzling theatrical feat. It made for magnificent social media clips.

Fly all you want in Silicon Valley. But here, on the southern tip of Africa, the future of mobility is not about flying cars. In South Africa, the future of mobility depends on whether a mother in Orange Farm or Khayelitsha can afford the basic human right to move!

Mobility is freedom. Mobility is access to employment, education, healthcare, and economic dignity. Those things so many of us in this room enjoy. And in South Africa today, we have engineered a structural poverty trap on wheels.

Official government policy says household transport spending should never exceed 10% of total income. Stats SA says the national average is 16%. But look at the working class. The Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity Group tracks the real cost of living. On our national minimum wage of just over R5,000 a month, the average worker spends R1,520 on taxi fares alone. Transport and basic electricity eat up over 64% of their entire take-home pay.

Think about that math. A worker surrenders half their salary just to sit in a minibus taxi to get to work. They are left with less than R1,800 to feed a family of four for thirty days.

Do you know what that looks like in human terms? Over 25% of South African boys under the age of five suffer from stunting due to chronic malnutrition. Why? Because their mothers are forced to choose between the taxi fare to keep their jobs and buying eggs and milk for their children. Our transport system is actively starving our children!

And why? Because of spatial apartheid and total policy failure. Low-income workers are forced to live on urban peripheries, paying a double-fare penalty every morning and evening. Two minibus taxis to work, two minibus taxis back. That is R72 a day. R1,580 a month in cash.

And who carries them? The minibus taxi industry carries over 80% of all public transport commuters in this country. Yet how much operational subsidy does the state provide to those taxi operators? Bus operators, by contrast, get lavish subsidies.

Zero. Not one cent.

Every hike in crude prices, every spike in the General Fuel Levy, and every increase in the Road Accident Fund levy is passed directly onto the shoulders of the poorest of poor commuters.

Our mobility operators are now at a critical juncture. Taxi operators are trapped between a rock and a hard place: bankruptcy or abandonment. If they raise their fares to match true fuel inflation, commuters simply cannot pay, ridership collapses, and routes die. If they keep fares flat, they run at an operational loss and cannot service their brakes or replace their tyres.

And it is not just taxis. Go out to OR Tambo or Cape Town International. Look at the aprons. You will see commercial passenger aircraft parked in the heat. Air traffic control snags alone don’t ground them. They are parked because South Africans cannot afford domestic airfares. Fuel costs have pushed ticket prices past the breaking point, forcing airlines to consolidate flights just to keep a single aircraft financially viable.

Look at your own roads at dawn. You will see an unprecedented army of commuter cyclists pedalling twenty, thirty kilometres along unlit highways without cycle paths, dodging heavy trucks. They are not riding for fitness. They are riding because they cannot afford the taxi fare.

And while this tragedy unfolds on our streets, what does our government do?

Between 2019 and 2023, the Gauteng Department of Roads and Transport handed the Bombela Concession Company R5.1 billion in contractual “patronage guarantees” for the Gautrain. Over the same four-year window, Gautrain passenger trips collapsed from nearly 14million to under 8 million.

We are paying billions in public money to insure the commercial profits of an empty luxury train service for a wealthy elite, while Metrorail tracks sit stripped and gutted, and our working class have to walk through the dark to get to work.

And now the Gautrain Management Agency wants to launch an e-hailing service called “Gau Express”? Are you joking? The state is bleeding transit passengers, and its answer is to launch an overpriced, app-based taxi fleet to compete with private operators on congested roads? The very promise of the Gautrain was to decongest these roads.

It is vanity masquerading as public policy. We must stop funding vanity projects and start funding purpose and greater mobility equality. We must fund the freedom to move, a constitutional right that seeds human actualisation.

Policy Paralysis and the Slow Collapse

This brings us to the core dilemma in this room: the future of our domestic automotive industry amid paralysing policy indecision.

We have arrived at that fork in the road. Now we must choose decisively. Either South Africa will remain an industrial manufacturing powerhouse that builds, welds, and exports motor vehicles, or we will abandon that legacy and become a pure import-and-retail trading desk.

Right now, our government is attempting to do both under a contradictory, chaotic hodgepodge of policy.

They are trying to mix oil and water. You can make an emulsion from oil and vinegar, yes, true, but only with a powerful emulsifier. If you let that settle, it will eventually split. In an industrial economy, that emulsifier must be a competent, decisive, visionary state that coordinates trade policy, energy security, rail logistics, port operations, and localised manufacturing incentives with ruthless precision.

We do not have said emulsifier.

Instead, we have policy paralysis. We talk endlessly about New Energy Vehicles, yet our localised incentives remain sluggish and opaque while foreign competitors dump subsidised imports into our dealerships. We watch Transnet bottle up our ports, forcing OEMs to incur crippling demurrage costs while finished vehicles sit stranded offshore and export containers rot on sidings.

Let me give you an analogy.

You all know the famous dinner party trick. A magician grabs the edge of a tablecloth loaded with plates, glasses, and silverware. If you want the plates to stay safely on the table, you must grab that cloth and yank it with blinding speed and absolute conviction! Inertia does the work, the cloth snaps free, and the dinner service remains intact.

What is our government doing? They are not yanking the cloth.

They are slowly, timidly, hesitantly dragging the tablecloth inch by inch. And what are we doing? Are we sitting back, watching the plates wobble, the wine glasses tilt, and the cutlery slide inexorably toward the edge of the table? We can do better.

When that crockery hits the floor and shatters into a million pieces, do you think you can simply glue it together again? Rebuilding an automotive industrial base after it collapses is like rebuilding an economy after a war. Once the toolmakers pack up their dies, once the foundries shut down their blast furnaces, once the Tier Three engineers leave our shores, no one comes back.

Why are we allowing this? I will tell you why.

Because the private sector has gone quiet. The captains of industry in this room are terrified. You fear that if you speak plainly, criticise the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition, challenge the Department of Transport, or question the fuel levies, you will lose your seat at the negotiating table. You fear an audit, ostracism, or being passed over for government fleet procurement. Yes. I said it. You are afraid to bite the hand that feeds you crumbs, while that same hand starves your entire ecosystem.

Strip away the political noise. South Africa is not an ideological experiment; run it like a business.

If you sat on the board of directors of a major enterprise, looked at the management accounts, and saw logistics failing, fuel costs bankrupting your consumers, imported products destroying your core manufacturing margins, and your capital draining into vanity projects, what would you do?

Would you smile, nod, and compliment management on their slides?

Not a chance! You would intervene. At least I hope you would. You would right-size the operation, overhaul the strategy, fire incompetent management, and demand accountability.

You are the board of directors of the South African automotive industry! It is time you start acting like it!

Speak Truth to Power

Colleagues, hear me today. Silence is not diplomacy. Silence is complicity.

We cannot sit at Automechanika, trade business cards, marvel at shiny imported showroom displays, and pretend that our silence will protect us. It will not.

It is time to speak truth to power!

To the National Consumer Commission and the NRCS: stop turning a blind eye. Demand mandatory public-safety recalls for every defective imported vehicle. Stop accepting foreign laboratory paperwork on blind faith. Put every imported model on local weighbridges and crash-testing jigs before our citizens pay with their lives.

To the Department of Transport and National Treasury: scrap the vanity spending.  Stop pouring billions in patronage guarantees into empty luxury trains like the Gautrain. Reallocate those funds to where the real economy moves: mass commuter rail, Bus Rapid Transport networks, and subsidising the minibus taxi industry that keeps South Africa working. Conduct an immediate, independent audit of the General Fuel Levy and the Road Accident Fund to strip away the artificial tax bloat crushing our transport operators and working families. While you are at it, let’s review the basic fuel price.

And to every CEO, every dealer principal, every component manufacturer, and every aftermarket leader in this room: let’s take ownership of this industry together.

We need to stop waiting for some messiah. The industry has the economic leverage. The technical knowledge. The institutional voice.

Yes, take it from me, if you speak out, you will ruffle feathers. Yes, you might take flak from bureaucrats who would rather maintain the illusion of control. But I would rather take censure for speaking the truth for South African jobs and South African lives than die a slow, cowardly corporate death on an abandoned factory floor.

Stand up for your component suppliers. Stand up for your assembly workers. Stand up for the mother who has to walk through the dark because she cannot afford the taxi fare. Stand up for that five-year-old who suffers the consequences. Lastly, stand up for the dignity of South African mobility.

Let’s lift our heads out of the sand. And speak truth to power. If we unite, we can rebuild this country’s automotive industry into one we can be proud of, one that is more vibrant and useful.

We have no other choice. My father often says to me, and it is a hard truth: No one will save us. We must save ourselves.

Thank you.

Smarter infrastructure, better connected transport systems and airport experiences that reflect African creativity were at the centre of Runway to Railway: Project Maverick, held at the Vineyard Hotel in Cape Town on 22 October 2026. The gathering brought aviation, technology and creative perspectives into a discussion about how innovation can improve infrastructure and the experience of the people who use it.

Held under the theme Simply Connect Africa, the event forms part of the Runway to Railway vision conceived by Anna K Hecart, founder and director of Connected Group. The platform brings different sectors together to explore connections between infrastructure, business and opportunity across the continent.

Raising the Bar for African Infrastructure. Panel participants: Dirk Ackerman, moderator; Nicholas Ferguson, Executive Managing Director, RSA Aero; Hasnain Motlekar, Acting Chief Executive Officer, BCX; and York Ning, Director, ICT Marketing & Solution Sales Department, Huawei South Africa.

“Runway to Railway began with a belief that Africa’s progress depends on the connections we make between people, industries and ideas,” said Hecart. “We are pleased to announce the Runway to Railway Expo for November 2027. Our ambition is to bring the people shaping transport, infrastructure and technology together with investors and creative businesses to explore practical solutions and build partnerships that move Africa forward.”

The Expo is being developed as a meeting place for aviation, rail, logistics, infrastructure, technology, tourism and design professionals, alongside investors and public-sector stakeholders. Partners can expect opportunities to showcase their capabilities and connect with potential collaborators. Attendees can look forward to discovering innovations, exchanging ideas and exploring how better connected infrastructure can support African business and communities.

Anna K Hecart, Founder and Director of Connected Group and visionary behind Runway to Railway, addresses the gathering.

The infrastructure conversation brought the airport development perspective together with the technology expertise of BCX and Huawei. It considered how closer collaboration can support better passenger experiences, reliable operations and the practical delivery of connected infrastructure.

“The decisions that shape a passenger’s journey are made across many different organisations,” said Ackerman. “Bringing developers, operators and technology partners together early helps us see how those decisions fit together and where collaboration can make infrastructure work better.”

“An airport is part of a much wider economic network,” said Ferguson. “Its development needs to consider how people arrive, how businesses connect and how the surrounding region benefits. Innovation should support that wider purpose while making the everyday experience more efficient and welcoming.”

“The value of connected infrastructure lies in what it enables people and businesses to do,” said Motlekar. “Reliable networks, secure systems and useful information need to work together. Planning these capabilities from the outset helps organisations improve services and respond as demand changes.”

Gavin Rajah delivered the closing remarks, extending the conversation to the quality and character of retail experiences at African airports. He highlighted the opportunity to bring greater creativity and a stronger expression of African identity into spaces that shape travellers’ first and last impressions of a destination.

“An African airport should give travellers a real sense of place,” said Rajah. “Our retail spaces can do far more to showcase the continent’s design, fashion, food and craft. We have the talent and the stories. The opportunity is to present them with imagination and the quality they deserve, while creating space for African creative businesses to grow.”

Gavin Rajah, closing speaker, addresses creativity and African identity in the airport experience.

Event photographs

The Raising the Bar for African Infrastructure panel at Runway to Railway: Project Maverick.

An exchange during the infrastructure panel discussion.

A panellist contributes to the infrastructure discussion.

An on-stage presentation during Runway to Railway: Project Maverick.

Guests exchange ideas during the luncheon at the Vineyard Hotel.

Guests follow the programme at Runway to Railway: Project Maverick.

Guests seated during the event programme.

A guest listens during the luncheon.

Guests in conversation during the event.

Networking at Runway to Railway: Project Maverick.

Guests gather for a photograph at the Vineyard Hotel.

Guests connect outside the event venue.

Conversations continue between programme sessions.

A conversation during the event reception.

A conversation at Runway to Railway: Project Maverick.

*All photographs featured in this article were captured by: Elvis Nyelenzi

We all know that global trade is becoming increasingly important. Economies are navigating challenges on multiple fronts, businesses are under pressure to remain competitive, and every opportunity to grow, invest and create new markets must be seized to lead to success.

But what if some of those opportunities are already within reach, and we simply aren’t making the most of them?

For Africa, one such opportunity is the African Growth and Opportunity Act.

AGOA is a U.S. trade programme established in 2000 to strengthen economic and trade relationships with eligible countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. It provides duty-free access to the U.S. market for more than 1,800 qualifying products, spanning a wide range of manufactured and value-added goods, including automotive components, textiles and apparel, agricultural and processed food products, chemicals, plastics, metals and other industrial products.

Following President Donald Trump’s announcement and the subsequent extension of AGOA through 31 December 2028, South African manufacturers have been given additional time and certainty to pursue opportunities in one of the world’s largest markets.

But access to a market is only part of the equation.

The real question is: are we equipped to take advantage of it?

Because securing an opportunity to supply an international customer is one thing. Having the machinery, skills, capacity and processes to fulfil that opportunity – consistently, competitively and at the required standard – is another.

For KNUTH Machine Tools, however, the significance of AGOA extends far beyond the trade agreement itself.

Does the African industry have the production capacity, technology and skills required to turn market access into manufactured exports?

“We often talk about market access as though it is the finish line. It isn’t. It is the starting point. If African manufacturers are going to compete for more international business, we need to build the production capacity and capabilities that allow us to compete -and deliver – at an international level,” says James Fourie, Technical Sales Team Lead, KNUTH SA.

For manufacturers across sectors such as automotive, mining, engineering and energy, increased export opportunities could mean greater demand, making it essential to optimise operations, improve productivity and strengthen production capacity.

From Market Access to Manufacturing Capacity

The renewed focus on AGOA comes at a time when manufacturers globally are under pressure to produce more efficiently while controlling costs and maintaining consistent quality.

For African manufacturers, the opportunity is therefore not simply about exporting more. It is about being equipped to manufacture more competitively.

There are plenty of ways manufacturers can improve how competitively they operate. It can start with something as simple as identifying production bottlenecks, reducing downtime or getting more out of existing equipment. For others, it may mean improving production planning, reviewing tooling and processes, upgrading ageing machinery, introducing CNC technology or investing in automation.

Just as importantly, manufacturers need the right skills to make the most of these improvements and ensure that technology translates into real gains on the shop floor.

“Manufacturing competitiveness starts long before a product reaches the shipping container,” says Ruan Cowley, Managing Director of KNUTH SA. “It starts with the equipment, the people operating it and the processes behind it. If AGOA creates additional demand, manufacturers need to be ready to respond to that demand, and that requires investment in production capability.”

This is particularly relevant for businesses that may currently be operating with limited capacity or processes that are already under pressure.

A manufacturer receiving an opportunity to supply a larger international customer cannot necessarily scale simply by adding another order to the production schedule. Increased volumes can expose operational inefficiencies.

The result is that market access can quickly become a manufacturing-capacity challenge.

The Machinery Question

For more than 100 years, KNUTH Machine Tools has been part of the global manufacturing industry, working alongside manufacturers as production methods, technologies and market demands have evolved.

That experience has shown that improving manufacturing competitiveness is rarely about one machine or one investment. It is about understanding the operation as a whole.

For machine shops and component manufacturers, technology can play an important role in that process. Modern CNC machinery, for example, can improve consistency, reduce manual intervention and support the production of more complex components. But the right technology depends on the needs of the individual operation.

“Buying a machine is not the same as improving a manufacturing operation,” says Fourie. “You first need to understand where the constraints are. It could be capacity, workflow, skills, tooling, programming or simply the way a process is being managed. Once you understand that, you can make more informed decisions about where technology can add real value.”

That broader approach becomes increasingly important as manufacturers look to compete for international business.

Ultimately, the goal is not simply to have more technology on the factory floor. It is to build more capable, efficient and competitive manufacturing operations.

“International competitiveness isn’t built overnight,” says Cowley. “It requires manufacturers to make decisions today that improve their ability to compete tomorrow. That includes machinery, skills, service, maintenance and the ability to keep production running.”

A Window – Not a Guarantee

AGOA’s current authorisation runs through the end of 2028, while the United States has also begun a process to consider how the programme could be modernised.

That means manufacturers should view the current environment as an opportunity to assess their readiness rather than simply waiting for export demand to appear.

AGOA is also not the only preferential trade opportunity available. Through agreements and arrangements such as SACU, SADC, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), the SADC–EU Economic Partnership Agreement, the SACUM–UK Economic Partnership Agreement, SACU–EFTA and SACU–MERCOSUR, South African businesses have access to a range of regional and international markets under preferential trading conditions.

The markets are there. The opportunity is there. The question is whether African manufacturing is ready to make the most of it.

For KNUTH, that means encouraging manufacturers to consider a more fundamental question: If a new international opportunity came across the desk tomorrow, would the factory be ready to produce it?

The market may open the door. Manufacturing capability determines whether you can walk through it.