In a move to reduce congestion at one of Africa’s busiest land borders, the implementation of a one-stop border post (OSBP) between South Africa and Zimbabwe is set to go-ahead, according to Mike Fitzmaurice, chief executive of the Federation of East and Southern African Road Transport Associations (Fesarta). Fitzmaurice told FTW that construction of the OSBP on the Zimbabwean side of the border had already begun while blueprints for the construction of the border post in South Africa were in the pipeline. “It should be completed by the end of 2021, or start of 2022,” he said. “I know that there are similar construction plans on the South African side of the border. I have seen the plans and the 3D draw ings of it, so it has been in the pipeline for some time.”Currently, trying to cross the Beitbridge border can take up to four days, with more than 25 000 people and 500 trucks passing through the corridor each day. Fitzmaurice said the OSBP would ease congestion, but warned that officials managing the border should avoid a disaster like the one at the Chirundu border post between Zimbabwe and Zambia. “If you take the situation in Chirindu, the first OSBP in Africa, it ended up in a total disaster,” he said. “They often have a big staff turnover and no follow-up capacitybuilding in place to make sure the new staff and managers are trained to follow the procedures. It slowly dwindles back into the old ways and before you know it they are doing things exactly the same way they did before the OSBP was constructed.”
