Transnet Class 18E Series 1 18-503 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of Transnet’s many faults (it has many good points too) is that it keeps changing its branding. For about 60 years just about everyone was familiar with the South African Railways & Harbours or SAR&H or its Afrikaans equivalent – well, okay, maybe not so happy with the absolute monopoly but we all knew the name and what it represented. Then for some reason the SAR&H was evolved into SATS – South African Transport Services but soon that wasn’t good enough and the group became Transnet, with its various offshoots and divisions.

One of these that we all remember was Portnet – which actually wasn’t a bad choice for the old Harbours Service. But still not satisfied with things, someone decided that Portnet must be absorbed back into Transnet with the divisions taking on separate identities – Transnet National Ports Authority (TNPA) and Transnet Ports Terminals (TPT). Lest we forget however, in between we had South African Ports Operators (SAPO) whose acronym clashed with that of the South African Post Office.

Nor was the railways spared this confusion in the haste to rebrand. It became Spoornet, a name which surprisingly stuck in the early days of post-1994. But eventually that had to change, becoming Transnet Freight Rail as the division went about attempting to convince itself that it could survive as a main line carrier of freight only – no more parcel trains and definitely no more branch lines.

Another of the older divisions to suffer this loss of identity was the old workshop division, well established at places like Germiston, Salt River, Durban, Pretoria, Bloemfontein, Uitenhage and so on. Those that weren’t shut down or emasculated became Transwerk –again a name that surprisingly hung around for longer than expected. But change comes to all and Transwerk evolved into Transnet Rail Engineering, or TRE by its acronym – another of those habits we seem fascinated with.

And now, once more the passion for name-changing has taken hold. The engineering business is now called Transnet Engineering (TE), which we are forced to admit is actually quite a good choice for a change. In fact, we wonder, why on earth wasn’t it called that in the first place? (Source: Ports.co.za)

All of the above pales into insignificance when compared to the embarrassing realisation of the acronym for the South African Border Police’s division – Port Of Entry Security!