South Africa has failed to deliver on its goal of establishing a high-speed passenger rail service by the end of 2025.
During his 2019 State of the Nation Address, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced an ambitious plan to create a bullet train network connecting all of the country’s major cities.
“I dream of a South Africa where the first entirely new city built in the democratic era rises, with skyscrapers, schools, universities, hospitals, and factories,” he said.
“We should imagine a country where bullet trains pass through Johannesburg as they travel from here to Musina, and they stop in Buffalo City on their way from eThekwini back here in Cape Town.”
A year later, former director-general for transport Alec Moemi promised that a high-speed rail project was in the works, with a initial launch anticipated for 2025.
This deadline has since been pushed back, and the focus has shifted to the creation of a new Gauteng-Limpopo line.
In July 2025, the Department of Transport (DoT) announced that it planned to launch South Africa’s first high-speed rail service between the two provinces by 2030.
The Gauteng-Limpopo bullet train project has undergone feasibility and environmental impact studies, and construction is expected to start later this year.
The 500km railway will run from Pretoria to Musina near the border with Zimbabwe, passing through the towns of Hammanskraal, Bela-Bela, Mokopane, Polokwane, and Louis Trichardt along the way.
Phase one of the project will focus on the section between Pretoria and Polokwane.
The DoT claims that the train will be able to take passengers between the provincial capitals in an hour and a half.
The same journey currently takes around two and a half hours by car, assuming you take the N1 and there is little to no traffic.
In order to achieve its 90-minute travel time, the new rail service will need to travel at an average of 177km/h to cover the 265km to Polokwane.
This may not sound particularly fast, considering that some Japanese trains can reach speeds of 320km/h, but the South African train only needs to reach a speed of 200km/h along its fastest sections to qualify as a bullet train.
National Rail Masterplan nowhere in sight
Related to all of this is the National Rail Masterplan, which was supposed to be finalized by the end of 2025.
Two years after Alec Moemi announced that the first high-speed railway would launch by 2025, former transport minister Fikile Mbalula published the National Rail Policy White Paper, establishing a framework for the nation’s new rail network.
The document outlined the criteria to determine high-speed corridors and set objectives for the bullet train programme.
Ramaphosa later claimed that the National Rail Masterplan would be completed by the end of 2025 in his weekly letter to the public on 28 October 2024.
“Among other things, the Masterplan will cover passenger rail in our cities, including rapid rail. It will also cover high-speed rail over long distances between centres,” said the president.
While the government’s stance is for the project to be entirely funded by South Africa, China has indicated that it is willing to invest.
While the Gauteng-Limpopo is the only line in active development, Deputy Director-General for Rail Transport, Ngwako Makaepea, has indicated that a Johannesburg-Durban corridor is also under consideration.
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