South Africa’s Railway Safety Regulator is working to support the 11 new operators expected to enter into the country’s freight market over the coming years, whilst addressing the potential safety risks, as CEO Brian Monakali explains to Benjámin Zelki.
‘One of the biggest challenges with market opening is going to be the new risks and hazards associated with bringing in new operations and activities’, says Brian Monakali, CEO of South Africa’s Rail Safety Regulator. ‘We are excited to be one of the key enablers of rail recovery in South Africa. We would like to see more rail activities and more investment coming, which will generate more traffic. We want to make sure that the market opening happens without the rail industry becoming more unsafe. RSR will work hard to ensure that we identify all major hazards and risks, and implement appropriate responses.’
Speaking to Railway Gazette International on March 10, Monakali explained that managing interfaces will be one of the major challenges. ‘The 11 new operators that have been allocated main line slots might introduce new interfaces between themselves, the infrastructure managers — both Transnet Rail Infrastructure Manager and the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa — and the regulator. Those interfaces present more opportunities for potential hazards, and we need to work hard to tackle them. ‘To date, there has been only one operator in the freight market — Transnet Freight Rail Operating Co. When preparing for multiple operators, RSR will need more robust safety standards, so we are now reviewing the existing standards and developing new ones.’
Supporting new entrants
Monakali says RSR has ‘worked hard to educate the new operators about what the Railway Safety Act is about, and helping them to get familiar with the safety standards and regulations, and what they need to do to comply with them.
‘We are also working on developing the guidelines required by the industry. These include guidance on how RSR and the infrastructure managers are going to certify new or refurbished rolling stock for use on the South African network. We shared a draft guideline on rolling stock with the industry on March 6, and we are now working towards publishing a final version in the next three months.
‘RSR is responsible for issuing safety permits for applicants to operate. That involves supporting the future operators to understand the application process, reviewing their applications, and ensuring they understand the obligations to be met when the permit has been granted.’
A risk-based approach
A former President of the International Heavy Haul Association, Monokali joined RSR as CEO in August 2025. ‘At that time, the new Railway Safety Act 30 of 2024 had just been proclaimed’, he recalls. ‘That enhanced the role of the regulator, giving us a bigger mandate. My mission for RSR is to be a very proactive regulator with a data-driven way of working. ‘We are focusing on doing our job using a risk-based approach’, he says. ‘That starts by having the right data, which is coming both from the operators and from RSR itself. We analyse the data and assess the condition of the infrastructure and assets, in order to determine which parts require attention. ‘We are also paying attention to trends showing that the condition of particular assets is going to worsen to the point of having failures, so that we can inform the operators and infrastructure managers when they need to intervene. We are also looking at where the most failures have been happening throughout the network, flagging them up for the infrastructure managers and operators to find solutions for them’
Monakali says ‘RSR can propose solutions if needed, but we prefer to leave it to the infrastructure managers and operators to determine how to address any issues that have been flagged up. When a solution is in place, and the infrastructure managers and operators are addressing the issues, RSR will be working to ensure the solutions are robust enough, as well as monitoring the execution and ensuring that the timelines are kept. ‘RSR continues to collaborate in rail safety harmonisation with its partners across the Southern African Development Community, to support international trains moving seamlessly, keeping interoperability issues in our focus.’