Customer Corner: Transnet Is A Looted Shithouse And Cummins Is Still In The Engine Room

Transnet is not some unlucky public operator that caught a few bad headlines on the chin. It is one of the great state-capture carcasses of modern South Africa, a logistics giant dragged through corruption, rigged procurement, supplier collusion and years of public-money abuse. And while the place reeks of scandal, Cummins is still there with the spanners out, servicing the tug fleet and pretending this is just another respectable customer relationship.

Cummins Is Not Some Innocent Bystander

Cummins is not watching this through binoculars from a safe hill. It has a published case study on South African port tugs for Transnet National Ports Authority, and in 2025 it was reported to have secured a seven-year maintenance contract for Transnet’s ageing tugboat fleet across multiple ports. That is not a casual brush with a messy customer. That is a long, oily commercial relationship with a company whose name already sits knee-deep in public scandal.

Build the engines. Service the engines. Rebuild the engines. Keep the invoices moving. Lovely work if you can get it.

Transnet Was Turned Into A Feeding Trough

This was not a one-off embarrassment caused by a stray idiot with a procurement password. Transnet became one of the emblematic state-capture feeding grounds. The problem was not just incompetence. It was a culture of extraction. Public money went in, connected interests crowded round, and the institution that was supposed to help move freight and keep the economy breathing got worked over like a drunk left alone in a cash machine vestibule.

That matters because when Transnet buckles, it is not some private boardroom headache. Ports choke. Rail suffers. Business costs rise. The wider economy pays. Ordinary people pay. The same old story every time these bastards decide public infrastructure is their own private buffet.

The R8 Billion Locomotive Filth Heap

Then there is the locomotive scandal, where the thing stops being grubby and starts becoming properly obscene. In April 2025, the High Court set aside the 2014 Wabtec locomotive contract for 233 diesel locomotives worth about R8 billion. The SIU described it as the first of four locomotive contracts to be annulled by the courts in the clean-up of state capture.

Not reviewed. Not criticised. Not politely frowned at over sandwiches and weak coffee. Set aside.

That is the calibre of customer Cummins is quite content to keep servicing in the ports while the wreckage of past looting is still being dragged through the courts.

Fresh Rot Kept Bubbling Up In 2026

And because places like this never settle for being historically disgusting, Transnet managed to cough up fresh scandal in 2026 too. Nine employees were suspended after internal audits found alleged collusion with suppliers and overcharging of between 50% and 1,000%.

That is not a minor discrepancy. That is a company apparently finding out that parts of its procurement culture still behave like a gang of feral piss-takers helping themselves to the carcass.

So no, this is not just old state-capture residue that everyone can now file away in a dusty report and pretend was dealt with. The rot kept moving.

Even The Clean-Up Smells Crooked

Then came the Nedbank settlement. R600 million paid to resolve litigation over the swaps mess. No admission of liability, naturally. Just another fat wedge of money thrown into the general direction of closure while the public is expected to nod along and call it progress.

That is the joy of a scandal like Transnet. Even the supposed clean-up feels like another room in the same building. Different suits, different documents, same old smell.

Cummins Still Gets To Pretend This Is Just Business

Nobody is saying Cummins masterminded state capture. That would be lazy. The point is that Cummins is still willing to stand beside a customer with a rap sheet like this and call it business as usual. Still happy to maintain the tug fleet. Still happy to sit inside the operating guts of a customer associated with looting, collusion, annulled contracts and institutional failure.

And that is exactly why this belongs in Customer Corner.

Because Cummins does not just sell into neutral markets and harmless customer lists. It sells into systems. Into reputations. Into filth. Into institutions whose public record already reads like a warning label.

Another Fine Customer In The Cummins Sewer

So yes, Transnet is a perfect TCAP customer piece. A state-owned logistics giant hollowed out by scandal, publicly humiliated by court reversals and still coughing up fresh corruption stink, while Cummins keeps the diesel side ticking over and pockets the service revenue.

Another lovely specimen for the Cummins ecosystem.

Another reminder that when you start digging through their customer base, you do not find clean hands. You find money, engines and a long trail of people willing to keep the machine running while the walls drip shit.

Lee Thompson – The Cummins Accountability Project