Cargo clearing and ore truck transits at the border posts on the busy N4 Maputo Corridor were reportedly flowing on Monday morning after sporadic post-election violence in Mozambique brought mayhem and customs office closure to the Ressano Garcia Border Post.
This morning at least two reliable sources, one from the freight industry and another surveilling the east-bound tipper queue, said South Africa’s Lebombo Border Post was operational.
The freight source said tippers were backlog for some distance from the Lebombo gate, all the way to the truck staging area at “Kilometre Seven.”
It is not sure whether tautliners are also using the border for store shelf supply chain efficiencies to Maputo.
In the run-up to the violent protests, perishables and other fast-moving consumer goods were regularly looted from curtain trucks, causing general cargo carriers to avoid the border.
In one of the earliest incidents of looting by protestors based in Ressano, a cold-chain truck worth R4.2 million was ransacked of Namibian fish worth about R800 000 before it was set alight and destroyed.
According to news agency Agência de Informação de Moçambique (AIM), the situation at the border is gradually returning to normal.
But Venâncio Mondlane, the presidential candidate of Podemos who claims the October 9 election was rigged in favour of the ruling party, continues to call for nationwide protests against Frelimo.
AIM reports that at the height of the border blockade, the number of people crossing the border fell to 150-200 a day, compared with more than 5 000 on a normal day.
“Gradually the trucks that had been held up in South Africa, in a queue that was 15 kilometres long, began to move again. Truck drivers who spoke to reporters said they had been forced to sleep for days in their cabs under inhuman conditions.”
During disturbances in Ressano, the homes of immigration and customs officials came under attack.
Another Mozambican news outlet, O País, reported that looters also caused serious damage to property, ripping out doors and windows to resell in Ressano’s poorest areas, the origin of most of the violence.
Sudekar Novela, head of the Association of Informal Importers, warned that, as the festive season approaches, the country could be facing shortages of potatoes, onions and tomatoes, if the demonstrations urged by Mondlane continue.
“We are facing difficulties in importing goods”, said Novela, “because of the fear reigning among both us, the traders, and our clients.”
The demonstrations had made people afraid to go and buy supplies at the Zimpeto wholesale market, on the outskirts of Maputo, with the result that huge quantities of vegetables, especially potatoes, are rotting on the Zimpeto stalls.
Over the weekend it was reported by Canal Moz, a Podemos-supporting online platform, that Maputo and Matola, situated right next to the capital, came to a standstill when protestors staged “protest of the pots” from 9pm.
Banging on pots and pans and marching through the streets, protestors chanted "avhayive" (thieves) at Frelimo, demanding that peaceful protests be allowed to continue.
But the demonstrations haven’t been peaceful, with an estimated 50 people dead since the elections, most of which had been shot during the post-election violence in November.
The freight community is also still calculating its losses, conservatively estimated at R1000 per hour per truck idling at Lebombo, waiting to pass through from the N4 to the EN4 at Ressano.
