Chronicle Editor
Some three weeks after vehicles started piling up at Beitbridge Border Post, the situation has improved after South Africa moved to smoothen the movement of travellers and essential cargo through the checkpoint.
The queues of vehicles on the entry and exit sides of the South African section of the border were running for up to 12 kilometres because officials there were observing their 10pm-6am curfew that was put in place to stem the spread of Covid-19 in Africa’s hardest-hit nation.
In addition, South African officials are running a centralised Covid-19 verification system right at the border post unlike on our side where travellers are checked and cleared at three centres in towns hundreds of kilometres away from Beitbridge. Both factors, coupled with increasing human traffic as Zimbabweans working in South Africa returned home to celebrate Christmas, created the traffic jam at the port of entry.
Travellers voiced their legitimate concerns at the extreme difficulties that they faced. They must be delighted that, at long last, their concerns have been heard and corrective action has been taken.
However, the corrective action has come too late for five Zimbabweans who have died since Tuesday while awaiting being cleared on the South African side to return home.
Limpopo’s Department of Transport spokesperson, Mr Matome Moremi said yesterday:
“What we are doing is the separation of traffic into heavy and light vehicles.
“These light vehicles are being directed to a holding place at the Musina Showgrounds as soon as they arrive in Musina. From there they are being cleared into the border post in batches.”
Assistant Regional Immigration Officer-in-charge of Beitbridge, Mr Nqobile Ncube agreed that the traffic flow had improved.
“Our counterparts in South Africa have managed to unlock the traffic problems which they have been having,” he said.
“As we speak traffic is moving smoothly to both sides of the border and on our side we have kicked in a rapid response mechanism to speed up the flow of both human and cargo traffic.”
It is good that the gridlock is being attended to.
However, we are deeply sad that sloppy management led to the death of so many people intending to travel back home through an official port of entry. One of them died sitting on a departure bench, possibly as horrified fellow travellers watched.
Was the situation supposed to deteriorate to that extent before better ways to manage the border post could be instituted? No. It is to be remembered that a week or two ago there was a high-level effort to speed up the clearing of travellers at Beitbridge but it appeared that it didn’t work out. We aren’t sure why but we feel that that suggestion should have been considered and acted upon.
It had to be noted that, apart from being bad for business and travellers’ comfort, keeping so many disgruntled people at one point as happened at Beitbridge Border Post over the past three weeks actually posed a potential, and very unnecessary security threat.
People could have rioted. We have seen that happening elsewhere. Encouragingly that didn’t happen in this instance, only a great deal of inconvenience to travellers and the five deaths.
Our hope is that going forward there would be better harmonisation of procedures and processes so that people and cargo move into either country efficiently. That is good for business and ensures that people are comfortable in their travelling.
Online Reporter