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.