There is hope that the public sector border post officials who attended yesterday’s Transport Forum would pay attention to the presentation by Lin Botha, a clearing agent based in Musina.
Known among her peers as someone who doesn’t mince her words about the maladroit mess too often experienced at transit points such as Beitbridge and Lebombo, her version of events that unfolded during December’s cross-border congestion struck a harsh and emotive chord.
By now it’s a well-reported fact that long-distance truck drivers were stuck in queues for days without access to water or important amenities.
Exposed to soaring temperatures by day and dangerous criminals by night, these essential supply-chain workers had been subjected to inhumane conditions that were “completely unacceptable”, Botha said.
Here’s why she feels that what was allowed to happen at South Africa’s two busiest land borders should never happen again.
“As far as the drivers are concerned, we had huge problems. We had no sanitation, no hygiene and no toilet facilities.
“Queues were stretching between places like Lebombo and Beitbridge for tens of kilometres.”
At Musina, about 17 kilometres south of the border, trucks at one stage took a week to get from the last town in South Africa to the crossing into Zimbabwe.
Botha recalled that they had had discussions with the local port authorities and tried to enlist the help of several of the municipal managers.
Saddest of all is that against warnings back then that stringent testing measures would only make matters worse, authorities paid little heed - if any - to private sector remonstrations.
Casting her mind back to the pandemic’s outbreak, she said: “We had made drivers aware of Covid standards since March 2020 because without doing so we wouldn’t have been allowed to get them back on the road during the hard lockdown.”
Transporters and other operatives in the logistics chain had taken all necessary precautions to ensure drivers knew what to do to curb the spread.
Unfortunately the authorities apparently knew better.
Subsequent to the institution of December’s tough testing regimes, “what they we’re doing is saying, ‘okay, let’s throw all that out the window because we can’t supply you with sanitation, we can’t even supply you with water, no ablutions, nothing”.
Water aid provided by the South African Association of Freight Forwarders (Saaff), Botha pointed out, had been much appreciated but unfortunately not enough.
“It was an absolute nightmare. We had several cases of heat exhaustion.”
As for safety, the desperation of drivers was exacerbated by the danger of armed assailants.
“We have 15 kilometres of bush road. Beitbridge and most other borders are known for having their criminal elements because they know drivers are easy prey.
“Most drivers carry money to get through border posts and have at least one cell phone.”
It was the easiest of things, Botha said, to smash a truck’s window and grab a driver’s private belongings.
Thankfully the SANDF alleviated the plight of drivers – to a certain degree at least – by patrolling the queue and preventing trucks from jumping the line once traffic officials from Thohoyandou had called it a day at 6pm.
At the height of queue-jumping, Botha recalled, it had been so bad that the access gate to the border control zone had been blocked off.
“There was no emergency lane kept open so there was no ability to get medical help to anyone.”
Sadly, as the congestion continued, a truck driver died.
One can only hope that Botha’s presentation caught the attention of those officials from the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) and Cross-Border Road Transport Agency (CBRTA) who attended the Forum.
