New Swazi ruling will clamp down on SA stolen vehicles

All vehicles in Swaziland are to be re-registered, effective last week, and one consequence of the exercise should be an answer to the perennial question: How many stolen SA vehicles are driving around Swaziland? Although primarily a revenue-generating scheme for government, the vehicle re-registration should help law enforcement by requiring car and truck owners to show ownership documents to authorities, including purchase papers and certificates from SAPF if the vehicle’s origin is SA. The re-registration is scheduled to conclude on September 1, 2011. For years local residents, many of them foreigners, have knowingly or unwittingly purchased stolen SA vehicles but never bothered to re-register them to receive local plates. Given the high volume of SA traffic in Swaziland, police said they did not have the ability to do more than sporadic checks of registrations. It has become customary for purchasers of used SA vehicles to be told either: a) no worries, you may drive over border in this car, or b) under no circumstances should you drive to SA in this car! 148 000 vehicles are registered with Swaziland’s Ministry of Public Works, and unregistered cars will eventually be detected because they will bear either old plates or SA plates. The latter will be scrutinised at police inspection points to be set up in future, the Royal Swaziland Police Force told FTW.