Time for Ramaphosa to step in and help bring calm, says Road Freight Association. From Moneyweb.
Post-election violence in Mozambique is costing SA up to R10 million a day in disrupted trade, says the Road Freight Association (RFA).
The association’s CEO, Gavin Kelly, has called for President Cyril Ramaphosa to step in and help bring peace to the conflict.
“We need a Statesman to explain to Mozambique that our country is suffering – and that there needs to be a resolve to agree on the way forward – and whilst that is happening, the corridor to the Port of Maputo needs to be secured. At all costs and by any means,” said Kelly in a statement.
“Our drivers, our trucks, our customers’ cargo, the business image of thousands of African businesses are all threatened day after day.
“Drivers are beaten (and they have nothing to do with the political landscape in Mozambique), trucks are looted, burnt, roads to the Port of Maputo blockaded and the very Port itself placed under siege.”
Mozambique’s opposition leader, Venâncio Mondlane, has disputed the October election results, which saw Frelimo’s candidate, Daniel Chapo, return with a thumping 71% majority. The country’s electoral commission has denied claims of vote rigging, though international observers said the election was flawed, characterised by irregularities in the counting process.
Mondlane, now in hiding, told the BBC that pressure from the protests should be continued until Frelimo is forced into negotiations.
Nearly 70 people have been killed in post-election violence, earning condemnation from around the world.
The SA government congratulated Frelimo on its victory under Chapo’s leadership – the first Frelimo head of state born after independence.
Read: The background to Mozambique’s deadly protests
A letter from the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference regretted the SA government’s endorsement of the election result, saying: “It will be difficult to continue repressing the will of people who want to be free. Should the incumbent government continue along this path, it will be impossible to rule the country, and life will become more miserable.”
Focus on fixing rail instead
While the Road Freight Association wants Ramaphosa to step in to bring calm, SA may be in danger of entering foreign conflicts that drain resources and are not easily resolved.
“What we need to do is fix the railways here at home,” says Stellenbosch University logistics professor Jan Havenga. “There is no doubt that trucks trying to cross the border from SA to Mozambique are facing severe difficulties. The border [with Mozambique] was closed for a few days recently, and we saw trucks backed up for 20 kilometres at some point.
“The solution is to fix our railway network and ports, bearing in mind that a single train carries the equivalent of 30-40 trucks delivering cargo by road.”
The volatility of Mozambique has always been there, says one transport expert. “Compare [Mozambique] to the peaceful transition in Namibia and Botswana to bring it into focus. That risk was always part of the Maputo trucking play.”
Havenga says the recent disruption to road transport entering the port of Maputo may reignite interest in the long-mooted Trans-Kalahari Rail Corridor, which would connect Gaborone in Botswana to Walvis Bay in Namibia. This would shave five days off the sailing time from southern Africa to Europe.
Read:
Crumbling SA rail prompts Botswana to forge new route
Scramble for critical minerals spurs an African rail revival
There is a danger that Mozambique reverts to the kind of civil war that ravaged the country in the 1970s, says Kelly.
“Do we want to return to that? No. However, without the intervention of a Statesman (or Woman), this scenario will become ever more true [where] violence erupts with outright war between various factions and the whole country becomes unstable.
“This means any form of product or commodity and passengers or tourism will be halted into and through the country,” said Kelly.
