Zimpapers Logo

Thupeyo Muleya

Beitbridge Bureau

Commercial cargo is now moving south through Beitbridge Border Post after the South African Revenue Service managed to refuel its stand-by generator on Tuesday afternoon, so allowing customs officers to process traffic entering South Africa.

The queue of trucks, at one point 8km long over Zimbabwean roads, was down to 2km yesterday afternoon as the backlog was cleared by SARS.

Continued load-shedding in South Africa on Monday affected the immigration and customs online systems on the southern side of the bridge, resulting in a traffic gridlock. The immigration system was swiftly brought back up but the customs system for commercial cargo only came up late on Tuesday. Reportedly the diesel tanks for the back up generator had run dry.

The inability to clear trucks driving south saw queues of stationery haulage trucks stretching for over 8km in Beitbridge as SARS officials were unable to process bills of entry for cargo leaving or entering that country.

Eskom, has been effecting stages 4 and 6 for electricity load shedding in South Africa. Stage 6 blackouts equate to at least six hours without power per day, possibly in two-hour cycles

Currently, around 10 000 travellers and 900 trucks carrying commercial cargo pass through the Beitbridge Border Post daily.

SARS spokesperson, Mr Siphithi Sibeko said they had attended to all the “logistical” challenges at the border.

“We have managed to resolve all the logistical issues and the flow of traffic is gradually returning to normalcy,” said Mr Sibeko. “Our officials working with other stakeholders clearing the backlog that had arisen. We are confident that operations will improve in the shortest possible time”.

By the end of the day, yesterday, a short and moving queue of south bound commercial cargo of less than 2km was seen along the major highway leading from the border to Bulawayo.

Most truck drivers said they had arrived in the morning yesterday. 

“I joined the queue just opposite Engen service station in the morning and it is moving. Hopefully I will get to south Africa in the next two hours,” said a truck driver identified only as Mr Shumba.

The acting head of immigration at Beitbridge (Zimbabwe), Mr Trust worth Manatsire said they cleared the bulk of the commercial traffic between Tuesday evening and yesterday morning.

“We pushed the bulk of south bound traffic on Tuesday evening after our counterparts attended to operational challenges on their side.

As of now we have a very short queue which we hope to clear by the end of the day. All stakeholders have put all hands on the deck so that we don’t have a gridlock again,” said Mr Manatsire.

Under the current set up, Zimbabwe and South Africa use the pre-clearance system to process cargo imports and exports.

This is a facility where goods are cleared and duties are paid before the trucks arrive at the port of entry, where customs officials will only check for compliance issues.

In Zimbabwe the clearance is done at the document processing centres in Masvingo, Harare and Bulawayo before the trucks may travel to the ports of entry and exit.