Porous Swazi borders a magnet for smugglers

The honest and the crooked alike are smuggling goods through two South African border posts into Swaziland where no customs offices exist on the Swazi side. The crooked do it because they can get away with it. The law abiders opt for tax evasion because they feel they have no choice. The Sicunusa and Gege Border Gates are magnets for smugglers, local MP Veli Shongwe told the media last week. The border posts in the southern Shiselweni region are principally used for traffic from Piet Retief. “People must declare goods brought into the country, but to do so they must travel 50 km out of their way to Mahamba Border Gate,” Shongwe said. Mahamba is a post perennially busy with traffic to and from Durban. The MP said importers passed through the two border posts and doubled back to smuggle goods through a fence separating the countries. The only factor that has thwarted a greater degree of smuggling is the lack of paved roads in the area. However, now that the MP has let the cat out of the bag and word spreads about the smuggling opportunities, more such activity is likely, the manager of a Matsapha-based road freight company told FTW. “Customs tax evasion is a serious problem and it’s crazy that two border posts are wide open,” he said. Swaziland’s Department of Customs and Excise is currently being incorporated into a new Revenue Authority along with the Income Tax Department, and no spokesman was available for comment. However, a source with the new authority told FTW that Swaziland was currently negotiating a R300m loan with the Arab Bank for Development in Africa to build a 41-km highway to connect the Shiselweni regional capital Nhlangano with the Sicunusa border gate.