Barbara Mommen may have called it quits as CEO of the Maputo Corridor Logistics Initiative (MCLI) some time ago but furthering the cause of the closest port to Gauteng remains in her blood – and when it comes to promoting trade through Mozambique’s capital harbour, she pulls no punches. Speaking at the Transport Forum at the University of Johannesburg last week, the corridor consultant made it very clear that she was pleased she was not wearing “that hat” anymore – the one that meant she had to watch what she said, no matter the intense frustration at political prevarication she often felt. Now heading up a consultancy called Coalescence, Mommen said: “If the South African government do not take a 180-degree about-turn from what they think is important, we simply are not going to make it.” In keeping with one of the Forum’s themes, “regional integration and implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCTFA)”, she said South Africa could have been leagues ahead in leading the way if only it had properly seized the opportunities presented to it by a well-established crossborder corridor.
With clear reference to current deputy president David Mabuza when he was still premier of Mpumalanga, Mommen said: “If a certain deputy of a certain province wasn’t so busy getting rid of his political opponents, allegedly, and had got a handle on the logistics corridor to Maputo, we could have been far ahead with regional integration.” Instead, she stressed, much of the corridor’s potential remained untapped. In backing up her argument, Mommen hauled out some hard facts. To insist on exporting citrus from Letsitele east of Tzaneen via Durban and not through Maputo, “simply doesn’t make sense”. Just the distance, she emphasised, proved her point that it was a “no-brainer” – Letsitele to Maputo being 475 kilometres compared to the 977 kilometres all the way down the N3. Recalling her time at the MCLI, Mommen said she had often been asked why she felt Maputo had a competitive advantage over Durban in relation to Johannesburg as the respective distances were 546 to 568. “Fair enough, Maputo is not that much closer but if you consider the congestion in Durban and the lack
thereof in Maputo, getting trucks in and out of that port, sometimes in under a day, significantly reduces costs.” Moreover, the current problem with trucks getting torched on the N3, particularly close to Durban, begs the question why transporters aren’t considering “options that work”. Add customs modernisation, which Mommen believes has made “exponential progress” on the Lebombo-Ressano Garcia border, and the Maputo corridor should be carrying a lot more road freight – about 1000 trucks a day – than it is at the moment. On the rail side, she said
bulk freight remained skewed in favour of road but the rail it could handle appeared to be given to Durban. “A certain rail freight service provider in South Africa specifically manages its pricing levels in such a way to favour South Africa, making it very difficult for Maputo to compete with our ports.” In addition, said Mommen, were outdated perceptions weighing on the corridor going directly east from Gauteng. “For some reason people still think that Maputo doesn’t work. Recently we did an entire transport cycle through Maputo, a 360-degree exercise using all the facilities on the way, and we were in and out, through the border
and back, in under a day. Tell me why then aren’t there more exporters using the corridor?” Add the lack of political will on top of blinkered views, and Mommen is sceptical about AfCTFA. “It’s inconceivable that the border is not yet a 24-hour operation. We really need a single-window tariff regime there, but I can tell you now, South Africa will not take notice soon enough to make it work.” To be serious about regional integration, she said, “demands a long term view but the political will that was lost during the Zuma years and the ramifications of that are going to be felt for many years”.
It’s inconceivable that the border is not yet a 24-hour operation. – Barbara Mommen
