Eswatini’s commercial hub of Manzini will finally surmount its through-traffic dilemma by building a highway extension to connect existing highways that terminate directly east and west of the central business district (CBD).
The new stretch of highway will be a significant advantage to road freight operators who must drive through Manzini, which is centrally located within the small landlocked country.
“This has been an issue for decades – how to channel travel through Manzini, so it never stops for a traffic light and can proceed unhindered at high speed,” Simpiwe Malaza, assistant city planner for the Municipal Council of Manzini, told Freight News at the recent Manzini International Trade Fair.
The highway link will allow unimpeded highway-speed travel for Gauteng to Eswatini’s Oshoek-Ngwenya border with South Africa, enabling free-flow traffic through Manzini to the Lomahasha-Namaacha border with Mozambique on the road to the Port of Maputo.
“The challenge has always been where to place the highway,” Malaza said.
“Traffic from the Maputo side leaves the MR3 highway now at the new interchange east of the CBD and travels on the bypass road north of the CBD and connects with the Manzini-Mbabane highway west of the CBD – but vehicles encounter traffic stops.
“Building a highway outside of the city either north or south would lengthen the cross-country trip and be disruptive to areas it must pass through,” Malaza added.
The solution that planners have hit upon is to build the highway directly through town, just skirting the CBD, and doing so in a way that would not displace existing infrastructure.
The seemingly impossible feat can be accomplished, planners have determined, by building the highway directly above the Mnzimene River that runs through Manzini from east to west.
From the new highway intersection to the east of the CBD that King Mswati III opened in June of 2023, the highway would follow the river to the site of the International Trade Fair.
From there it will utilise an undeveloped section of land to travel further west where connection with the existing Manzini-Mbabane highway would be made around the Nazarene Intersection.
The plan requires the removal of a traffic stop at KaKhoza on Manzini’s western border to ensure unimpeded movement.
No time frame or budget has yet been established for the project, which would finally bring relief to commercial vehicles that must currently spend about 15 minutes in stop-and-go traffic, burning diesel, whenever they make the unavoidable passage through Manzini.
