The situation at South Africa’s borders into Botswana is fast deteriorating into a mess of congestion and millions of rand lost to trade after it emerged this morning that, in addition to Skilpadshek, the Kopfontein crossing further north has been closed down as well for Covid-19 decontamination.
The decom exercise started at 11am and transporters, forced to deviate off the N4 highway to use alternative transits because of the Skilpadshek closure, are at a loss as to when Kopfontein will reopen.
It means that for the time being transporters have one alternative crossing to proceed onto the Trans-Kalahari Corridor (TKC) – Ramatlabama further south of Skilpadshek.
Monday’s news that the primary crossing on the N4 into Botswana will be closed until July 19 because the Department of Health can’t afford to pay Port Health practitioners to screen people for the coronavirus, had an immediate effect on volume towards Kopfontein and Ramatlabama.
With Kopfontein now closed as well, the queue south of Ramatlabama is backlogging as this report is being compiled.
Video footage posted by the Transit Assistance Bureau this morning shows trucks forming a line for kilometres, waiting horse-to-heel to squeeze through the developing bottleneck at Ramatlabama.
EDITORIAL COMMENT: Unsurprisingly, transporters using the TKC are exasperated by the rank incompetence of South Africa’s border authorities – one seeming to be more useless than the other in dealing with the utter desperation of a situation that logistics operators say could’ve been prevented.
It comes as no great revelation that as Transist members vented their spleen about the position they find themselves in, the honourable Deputy Minister of Transport, Dikeledi Magadzi, was getting ready to address a virtual session of the 39th SA Transport Conference.
One can only wonder what she was going to say, observing all protocol no doubt, and dreaming of regional integration and border harmonisation while on the ground cross-border truck drivers are yet again held up in their trucks because the powers that be have no clue about how to deal with a pandemic.
Yesterday, for example, Freight News approached the Cross-Border Road Transport Association (C-BRTA) with a set of questions about what was being done to assist trade through the affected borders into Botswana.
The email was sent to operation relations manager Carol Madigage, who replied that it was not her responsibility to deal with such a matter.
We were told that we needed to send the email to Mmenyane Seoposengwe, spokesperson for an organisation that collects border permit fees in return for helping industry with streamlining border transits.
Whereas they’re exceptionally proficient in performing the former function, they’re a little lackadaisical when it comes to the latter – and that’s a major understatement.
Oh yes, ye folk from the C-BRTA are also very good with going on fact-finding missions to places like Russia, only to do diddly squat when their intervention on the ground is required.
If the entire staff complement of the C-BRTA was replaced by a Wix or Wordpress do-it-yourself pay-pal site to collect permit payments, it wouldn’t change a thing.
Rather, the money wasted on these overpaid people could go to paying for Port Health staff, since the budget that the Department of Health was supposed to have used to pay for such functionaries seems to have been squandered and stolen.
As for the above-mentioned department, we’re still waiting for its spokesperson, Popo Maja, to answer our enquiries.
His peer at the Department of Home Affairs, Siya Qoza, at least tried, responding with sarcasm to a recommendation that immigration officers can easily stand in for Port Health workers since all that’s really required is administrative verification of Covid-19 test results.
Perhaps fed-up transporters, with trucks stuck south of Ramatlabama, should follow through on their threat – block up Mafikeng with heavy rigs until authorities catch a wake-up.
WATCH: Trucks queue south of Ramatlabama because the Skilpadshek and Kopfontein borders are closed.
