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Thupeyo Muleya Beitbridge Bureau

An attempt to smuggle into Zimbabwe a shipment of CCC T-shirts in a truckload of stockfeed on Sunday was foiled when the truck underwent a routine search and yesterday the 40-year-old Harare trucker was fined $50 000 (or two years) for his part in the attempt.

The 108 golf T-shirts, emblazoned with CCC slogans and logos, were worth R8 640 and the calculated duty if they had been imported legally would have been $179 000.

The T-shirts and the truck carrying them have been seized and the owners of both will have to go through other legal processes to recover the goods and truck.

Yesterday was just the criminal case against the driver.

Under the current Customs and Excise regulations, T-shirts are charged import duty at a rate of 40 percent of the import value plus US$3 per kilogramme and with the standard 14,5 percent VAT.

Chamunorwa Shonhiwa of Mbare in Harare, represented by Mr Patrick Tererai of Tererai Legal Practice, was convicted on his own plea of guilty.

He was facing charges of smuggling when he appeared before Beitbridge Resident Magistrate Mr Takudzwa Gwazemba.

Prosecuting, Mr Pithey Magumula said on July 24, Shonhiwa, who is employed by Transtech trucking in South Africa arrived in Zimbabwe via the Beitbridge border post from South Africa.

He was driving a commercial truck with two trailers carrying stock feed.

At the border he went about all the formalities indicating that he was transporting only stock feeds and left the border for Harare.

The vehicle was intercepted at the Chicago security checkpoint some 12 km along the Beitbridge-Harare highway.

A routine security search led to the discovery of the 108 CCC T-shirts and the fact that these had not been declared at the border and no import duty had been paid.