South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal provincial government is building the first five kilometers of a concrete wall along the border with Mozambique, to stop stolen vehicles and goods smuggling.
According to the South African press, this is a project that was launched in 2020 by the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Roads and Transport and the National Department of Public Works and Infrastructure (DWPI), but was put on hold the following year due to difficulties with funding and infrastructure. With the contractor.
At a meeting on 6 March, the authorities involved in this project updated the progress of the work, announcing that the construction of more than five kilometers of the wall in Umkhanyakudi, next to Mozambique's southern border, is already underway, out of a total planned of eight kilometers for the first phase, Which covers Tempe Elephant Park.
The South African authorities, citing local press, justified the resumption of the project with “social pressures” resulting from the ongoing theft of cars in that country, which were destined for Mozambique, as well as the smuggling of various products through the country. Those limits.
The first phase of the project, worth 2.1 million euros, began on November 17, 2023, and will continue for 12 months, after a new contractor was selected. The second phase of this work expects the wall to continue for another eight kilometers, and the third another nine kilometers along the border, up to the Pangulu River, at a cost of 13.2 million euros.
In July 2023, when the new contractor was hired to build this wall, KwaZulu-Natal Governor Nomusa Dube Ncube said the coastal district of Umkhanyakude, about 78 kilometers from Ponta do Ouro, in Mozambique, had been built. “For several years, we have been suffering from cross-border crimes, especially car theft, which leads to murders.”
Since January 2023, South African police have strengthened the fight against crime with more than 100 operational means in the northern region of KwaZulu-Natal province, bordering Mozambique and Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), according to the security force. .
It is estimated that more than two million Mozambicans work in mines, agricultural fields, restaurants, public transport and informal trade in South Africa, the most developed economy on the continent.
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