South Africa’s gateway-to-Gaborone transit into Botswana is processing cargo again after a double blow to power operations at Kopfontein Border Post.
This has been confirmed by the Transit Assistance Bureau (Transist).
According to spokesperson Kage Barnett, the border post on the R49 north of Zeerust reopened just after 8 am on Thursday morning, with transporters reporting successful crossings into Botswana at the Tlokweng Border Control.
The issue reportedly began yesterday when Kopfontein lost grid feed due to an Eskom fault.
There was also no diesel available for back-up power.
A message sent at around 7 pm last night, subsequently forwarded to Freight News by Transist, said: “Kindly take note that there is no Eskom electricity at Kopfontein and the generator has failed to activate.
“This power failure has negatively affected operations. Truck processing is now on hold until power is restored.”
Transist confirmed that the necessary escalations had been made to Eskom and the relevant contractor to restore power. Due to the outage, the mobile network required for border operations was also affected, leaving personnel unreachable.
“The Department of Public Works and Infrastructure’s leadership has committed to prioritising support for the contractor to get the generator operational,” Transist said.
Landlines were down as well, and at one point, the queue of trucks waiting to cross stretched to three kilometres.
Transist added that it had met with senior personnel from the Border Management Authority to expedite a contingency plan.
Intervention by the Bureau ultimately led to back-up power being restored, allowing cargo flows to resume along Botswana’s most critical supply chain from South Africa.
