A truck driver was rushed to hospital in Harare after he was trampled by an elephant south of the Chirundu border between Zimbabwe and Zambia.
The incident apparently happened when he stepped out of his truck in Hurungwe, an open safari area.
According to initial information by SA Long-Distance Truckers (SALT), the driver died on the scene, but it has now emerged that he survived.
Although it reportedly happened just after noon yesterday, a source said it had taken some time for the driver’s South African employer to arrange an ambulance from the town of Kariba.
Much later that evening he was taken by ambulance to Harare.
Details aside, the incident has once again highlighted the position in which long-distance drivers find themselves at border crossings such as Chirundu.
Notorious for being slow with cargo processing, choke points like Chirundu have deteriorated because of testing procedures for Covid-19.
Whereas screening, not testing, has assisted the flow of drivers and their rigs passing through the sub-Saharan region, countries in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) have ramped up time-consuming testing of drivers since relaxing lock-down regulations.
Unfortunately, coronavirus precaution methods have resulted in certain border posts – for the most part almost all of them – overflowing with trucks and drivers waiting to have their cargo cleared (*).
Of these problematic border posts Chirundu currently rates as the most dangerous.
Customs capacity shortfalls and extortion of drivers is an ongoing frustration.
With drivers forced to wait for days in their trucks with no facilities to cater for their needs in an area where big-five game roam freely, the human rights violations are plain to see.
In addition to reporting the trampling incident, SALT also told of drivers being robbed last night after lashing straps were cut by thieves who pounced in the early hours of the morning.
This morning a bulk tanker operator serving the Copper Belt province in Zambia and mining areas in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) reported to the Federation of East and South African Road Associations (Fesarta) that the queue south of Chirundu was 25 kilometres long.
That is well into the safari area, almost halfway to the last Zimbabwean settlement of Makuti before reaching the Zambian border.
In this area there are no toilets and food and water could be a problem if drivers don’t cater for the north-south journey between South Africa and the DRC where long delays have become the norm.
Fesarta chief executive Mike Fitzmaurice said theft from the back of trucks south of the Zambian border was "a very real problem".
He said he had spoken to the relevant authorities in Zimbabwe, such as the local revenue authority and police, but they had said they did not have the manpower or resources to patrol the queue at night.
North of the border drivers are much safer with enough truck parks to pull into.
It also means there is often no queue but overall, especially with Zimbabwe having serious trouble dealing with the volume of cargo going into Zambia, Chirundu has become a major headache for transporters using the SADC’s north-south line.
- Read this for context: https://www.freightnews.co.za/article/drivers-plead-sadc-alleviate-border-delays