From the melee of angry truckers recorded on a cellphone last night at the Kasumbalesa border post on the North-South Corridor (NSC), the transit looks more like a developing conflict than a crucial crossing.
In the dim light of the evening, men milled around shouting “let’s go, drivers, let’s go”, swooping one another up as they called for Zambia’s President by his nickname – “Bali, Bali, Bali!”
But neither Hakainde Hichilema nor his counterpart from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Felix Tshisekedi, has so far personally attended to the building transport crisis on the Copperbelt border.
Instead, last night, as was the case over the weekend, a delegation of ministers attended a meeting of striking drivers refusing to cross into the DRC.
According to yet more footage recorded at Kasumbalesa, an initial meeting of Zambian delegates resulted in yet more promises of finding a solution for the attacks that long-distance drivers are exposed to – promises that have led to naught in the past.
A follow-up meeting, this time attended by delegates from the DRC, at least resulted in undertakings of making ‘two security vans’ to ‘step up’ patrols on the road from Kasumbalesa to Lubumbashi and beyond.
The two vehicles are hardly enough to protect drivers on the Kasumbalesa-Lubumbashi stretch of almost 100 kilometres, let alone going further north-west to the copper mines of Likasi and Kolwezi, which are almost 400 kilometres from the border.
Adding insult to injury, DRC delegates apparently told the drivers that colleagues killed in the Congo would no longer be repatriated at the expense of the government of Kinshasa.
Arrangements would have to be made to bring back the bodies of slain drivers by their related concerns south of the border – relatives and the companies they work for.
One driver said it cost about US$1 000 to repatriate a body from the DRC.
In the meantime, violent extortion of truck drivers serving NSC interests in the Congo continues.
“There is no security in the Congo,” one driver said.
“We are attacked by the police, we are attacked by soldiers, and we are attacked by people living along the way.”
Considering that the very people entrusted with enforcing public security are the ones who join in on extorting bribes from truck drivers, often with fatal consequences if bribes aren’t paid, drivers can hardly be expected to listen to yet more assurances of improved safety measures in the DRC.
Looking at the footage received from the border, a Zimbabwean colleague said the men were chanting in the local Chewa language, shouting that they would be returning to their trucks and that nothing would move.
This morning, Mike Fitzmaurice, Chief Executive of the Federation of East and Southern African Road Transport Associations, confirmed that there was no movement south of Kasumbalesa.
Yesterday the build-up of trucks stretched almost to Chingola, about 45 kilometres south of Kasumbalesa.
This morning, that queue had reached Chingola and was said to be about 50 kilometres long.
Drivers are threatening that nothing short of intervention by Hichilema and Tshisekedi would be accepted.
