MALALANE – Corridor Gazette was at the Lebombo Border Post last Friday, at the height of the attacks, not only on Mozambicans, but also in retaliatory attacks on South Africans as far as Nigeria.
While the South African side at this border post had been quiet at the time, reports of vehicles being stoned four kilometres into Mozambique and roads being blocked, reached the media. At some point, no traffic was allowed in or out of Mozambique for a few hours, while negotiations between South Africa and Mozambique were apparently underway. The South African Police and members of the South African Defence Force were deployed at the Lebombo border.
Emotions ran amuck after the Zulu king, Zwelithini said foreigners should “go back to where they came from” and a charge of hate speech was laid against him by Tim Flack‚ spokesperson for the SA Defence Force Union with the Human Rights Council (HRC).
Interviews with members of the public were done by Corridor Gazette as traffic was trickling through from Mozambique to South Africa. Notable was the absence of vehicles with Mozambican registration plates. At one point, multimillion rand supercars without registration plates were entering the country from Mozambique. The drivers did not wish to talk to the press and sped away.
A truck driver from Limpopo spoke to SABC News on site and said that the situation across the border where he had just come from was tense, but denied reports that south African vehicles were being set alight.
Many of these long-distance truckers were however instructed by their companies not to enter Mozambique and slept over on the South African side.
At around 14:30 on Friday, a spokesperson for SA Home Affairs told Corridor Gazette that the traffic would be allowed to travel both ways.
