While the national strike by the Public Servants Association of SA (PSA) disrupted services at government offices last week, it seems to have made little impact at Beitbridge and Lebombo borders, which are SA’s busiest exit and entry points.
Government workers affiliated to PSA took to the streets on Thursday demanding a 10% wage hike from their employer. Their downing of tools saw several offices – mainly home affairs, labour and traffic departments – being closed for several hours. There were reports of long queues of trucks forming at the Lebombo gate in Mpumalanga.
Sowetan visited both borders at the weekend and its seemed to be business as usual except for glitches caused by loadshedding in Beitbridge near Musina, Limpopo.
On Friday, trucks and cars were frequently passing through the gates between Zimbabwe and SA without hindrance, while travellers carrying parcels could be seen getting into cross-border taxis near the busy market.
Most locals explained that there had been a slight delay on Thursday morning due to a power outage but after 9am it was business as usual, with travellers from both sides going through.
Taxi driver Kenneth Ndou said there had been nothing out of the usual except for a short delay the previous morning.
“Home affairs officials were not able to process travellers because the system was down for a few hours, but after that things were back to normal. Even today [Friday] people are coming through without any problem,” Ndou said.
Street hawker Johannes Mariba, who sells his wares near the border and travels between SA and Zimbabwe, also said things seemed to be moving along as usual.
“We were told that our passports could not be stamped and processed because of a problem with the system and we had to wait for a while. But to be honest I have not seen any problems since then,” Mariba said.
There was little impact also in Lebombo near Komatipoort in Mpumalanga.
Truck drivers who spoke to Sowetan on Saturday said they experienced some minor delays at the border post and they were worried that this would affect their wages at the end of the month. Many were travelling to Mozambique to deliver goods.
“As you can see there are queues because workers are on a go-slow. What frustrates us is that now we are getting closer to Christmas time and we need to have money for our families, but these delays are chowing on our pockets.
"I hope they [workers] resolve their issues as soon as possible because if we don't take enough load across, our pay will be affected,” said truck driver Dumisani Magagula.
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