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This newspaper’s enclave thesis should by now be familiar to its readers. But the enclave thesis has lived with one unresolved question about its long-term sustainability – how to get people or goods from one enclave to another in a safe and secure manner. Enclaves may provide safe and secure precincts in which to live and conduct business but nonetheless leave their occupants vulnerable to the risk of running gauntlets from one enclave to another.

This problem exists on two levels. The first is a goods and logistics problem, and the second a personal transport one.

A factory in Johannesburg needs to send goods from a manufacturing enclave in the city to the Durban port, but the trains are broken and trucks get hijacked or looted on the N3 highway.

The answer? Private logistics companies will need to both lease the train tracks and operations and set up a dedicated trucking route. They also need to get a charter to control traffic flows on the N3. Both will require the deployment of private security teams, drones, and artificial intelligence cameras along that exact path. Do that, and the cargo moves inside a private “secure bubble” from the factory straight to the ship.

In terms of the personal transport problem, you have a safe residential enclave and an office estate, but the public road connecting them has broken traffic lights, potholes, and crime.

The fix? Local businesses will have to form a private neighbourhood management team and win the rights to repair and secure the infrastructure on key arterial roads linking the enclaves. That means everything from fixing the potholes to installing streetlights and putting private security teams on every corner of that road. Now, workers, clients, and the like can walk or drive between the two office parks safely.

The choice of the term “chartered corridors” by this newspaper is deliberate. “Corridor” describes the defined route connecting functioning enclaves to one another, or linking them to the workers, suppliers, and markets on which they depend. The purpose is to extend organised capacity beyond the boundary of a particular property or precinct so that people and goods can move reliably between functioning places.

“Chartered” describes the authority under which that connection would be managed. A formal agreement with the relevant authorities and infrastructure owners would give a dedicated organisation specified rights to operate, maintain, and secure the route. In exchange, it would assume enforceable obligations. The charter would establish who may act, who pays, what must be delivered, and what happens when those commitments are not met. Ownership of the underlying road or railway need not change.

The success of the corridors therefore requires the cooperation of the state, but deft political footwork should secure this. The politicians, after all, also have interests to defend that overlap closely with those of the middle classes and the business community.

Securing these charters will also be very much in the interest of all South Africans. The effect will be to reduce friction in the economy, secure existing investment, allow workers to move more safely to work, and improve the sustainability of the enclave option, which is now so important to South Africa retaining its tax and employment base.

Obviously, it is not viable to secure every arterial and major freight route, but it will become necessary to secure key arterials and then major routes such as the N2 from Somerset West into Cape Town, all of the N1, and the N3. In major cities in the north of the country, linking enclaves through key arterials is also not as challenging as it seems if the project is attacked with the same commitment that is now going into constructing and securing the enclaves themselves.

South Africa is getting far down the road of enclave construction but not far enough down the road of charter corridor construction. The gap is becoming a key country risk. If the enclaves get too far ahead of the corridors linking them, they will fall victim to predation on those major routes and arterials. Once that starts at scale it will be a rough business to win back the major routes. Swift action is therefore a good idea.