SPECIAL REPORT: SOUTH AFRICA SUPPLY CHAINS
highway alone. However, within days, the widespread riots caused severe disruptions to road freight movement along some of the country’s key trade routes as protesters set cargo trucks ablaze along the roads and made entire sections impassable.
According to initial estimates by the Road Freight Association, at least 30 trucks were destroyed in the riots, costing logistics companies around R300 million (USD 17.1 million; EUR 14.7 million). Although carriers were able to resume the safe movement of goods once the riots began to subside and clean-up operations reopened some of the region’s key road links again, industry representatives warned that it could take the sector months to be fully operational. However, some companies that previously relied on just a small number of vehicles and drivers may not be able to bounce back from the property damage and financial losses at all.
Just 3 days into the unrest, the N3 highway, which connects the Port of Durban to Johannesburg and serves as a transport corridor for neighboring countries that rely on the Port of Durban for import and export activities, was cut off after several trucks along the route were attacked and torched. Although parts of the highway between Harrismith and Heidelberg were reopened earlier, it took almost an entire week until one of the region’s key trade arteries was safe and free to use again.
The attacks on trucks and logistics infrastructure also impacted cargo movements beyond South Africa’s borders. The Mozambican Association of Road Transport Operators claimed that some of the destroyed trucks belonged to Mozambican businesses moving goods between both countries. Congestion increased at the Beitbridge border crossing between South Africa and Zimbabwe because truck drivers lacked proper documentation to cross the border after some truck companies had to shut down amid the deteriorating security situation in parts of South Africa. Meanwhile, truck drivers from Botswana were advised to find alternative routes and stay away from the unrest hotspots amid rising security concerns, likely causing further delivery delays far beyond South Africa’s borders.
Intermittent attacks on foreign truck drivers have posed security risks for years
Although the widespread civil unrest in the provinces of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng is considered the worst outbreak of violence in South Africa since the end of Apartheid in the early 1990s, foreign truck drivers, in particular, have faced violent attacks in the country for years amid the simmering social and economic tensions that fueled the recent protests.
Over the last four years, the eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal has seen the highest number of attacks on trucks transporting goods across the region, particularly along the key N3 highway, but truck drivers faced similar dangers in other parts of South Africa as well, including in Western Cape, Northern Cape, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, Free State, and Gauteng.
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While the intensity and regularity of attacks have varied greatly over time, violent incidents have been reported as early as the spring of 2018, with more than 1,300 trucks torched, around 200 people killed, and at least R1.2 billion (USD 77.8 million; EUR 69.5 million) worth of goods destroyed until the summer of 2019 alone.
Highway / Location
R103 R23
R550 N3
N12 R21 R9
Province
Kwa Zulu-Natal Kwa Zulu-Natal Kwa Zulu-Natal
Kwa Zulu-Natal/Gauteng Gauteng Gauteng Free State
Roads around city of Bethal Mpumalanga
Figure 2: Snapshot of targeted roads in 2020. Source: Everstream Analytics.
Attacks on cargo trucks driven by foreign nationals continued throughout 2020, and experienced another peak in the last two months of 2020 when dozens of trucks were petrol bombed, drivers attacked, and their cargo looted along some of the country’s major highways. In 2020, road blockades with burning tyres, amid protests against the employment of foreign drivers, have also posed a security risk to trucks in South Africa’s urban centres, along interstate highways, and at border checkpoints with countries such as Mozambique, Botswana and Zambia.
The N3 highway was not only a notable protest hotspot during the widespread unrest in July, it has also been one of the most targeted routes during the intermittent bouts of xenophobic attacks on foreign truck drivers in recent years, seeing almost a dozen attacks in a day during a violence spike last year. However, incidents were also recorded on routes such as the R103, R23, and R550 in Kwa Zulu-Natal, R59 in Free State, N12 and R21 in Gauteng, and several key roads around the town of Bethal in the Mpumalanga Province.
Cargo security risks likely to persist amid simmering tensions
Figure 1: Affected sections of the N3 highway between Durban and Johannesburg during the unrest. Source: Everstream Analytics
The intensity of these violent attacks and the wider social unrest that gripped parts of South Africa in July have greatly varied over time. However, these security issues are unlikely to cease completely as the federal government and regional authorities struggle to address underlying causes fueling these tensions, like years of economic disparities, rising unemployment rates, and a lack of service provisions, all of which deteriorated further amid the global COVID-19 pandemic.
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