A fence too flimsy to surround a northern suburbs home and one policeman to patrol more than 50km. This is the border between South Africa and Mozambique. Paul Kirk reports
Nearly every morning Sergeant Chris van der Heever jumps into his 4×4 bakkie and drives alongside the 0,9m high fence that separates South Africa from Mozambique. Invariably he will find a hole in the fence.
Car thieves, cattle rustlers or gun smugglers will simply have driven through the ageing barbed wire fence into or out of South Africa.
Van der Heever is stationed at eManguzi, the northernmost town in KwaZulu-Natal. He is one of only three members of the border policing unit stationed there permanently and is responsible for 54km of border with Mozambique.
eManguzi is a major route for illegal aliens into South Africa as well as one of the most important departure points for stolen cars. It is also a major arrival point for AK-47 rifles. Across the fence the famed Russian rifle can be had for as little as a few hundred rand – prices have risen since the days when they cost a tin of beans and a loaf of bread.
Last week eManguzi police received a report that a man was seen openly trying to sell a brand new AK-47 in the middle of the town. They raced to the scene but found no sign of the man or his gun.
“I do not doubt that report at all,” says Superintendent Ian Smith, the top cop in eManguzi. “We recover a great number of AKs here – as well as every other type of weapon you can think of.”
Smith is gearing up for a busy time. Over the Christmas period more than 10 illegal aliens will be arrested in his town every day. Hundreds of car smugglers will take advantage of the influx of strange cars to the area to drive their stolen cars across the border and into Mozambique. Gun smugglers will take advantage of the chaos to bring as many AK-47s into South Africa as they can.
Amazingly, eManguzi remains a peaceful town.
“We have very little crime committed here, very little. The guns and cars we find here are all en route to other places. The guns are en route to the big cities to be sold,” says Smith.
“The stolen cars are destined for Maputo to be sold or exported. The smugglers simply drive the vehicles through the bush and across the border. They are good at it, they get luxury cars over the border using tracks a 4×4 would struggle on, we hardly ever find cars stuck in the bush anymore.”
Smith unhappily, but honestly, admits “the border is violated daily and nightly”.
“We have a great relationship with the Mozambique police who are first class, the problem is they are as short-staffed as us.
“The army helps patrol our border, but on many nights the only person out there is Chris [van der Heever] – the only policeman for nearly 50km of border.”
Christo Henning, the South African Revenue Service representative, cannot say just how much the cheap fence costs South Africa – but it is a lot.
“We have no idea at all exactly how much revenue we lose through people smuggling goods past our border posts.
“Estimates range from R10-million a month to R17-billion a year. Whatever the case, the situation is very bad. And then there is the issue of guns, drugs and stolen cars which are smuggled across our porous borders.
“We are working on the situation, but it will take time to rectify,” Henning says.
The eManguzi police station has two dog handlers, one to search for explosives and one for narcotics.
The Mail & Guardian was invited to join Van der Heever and Inspector Ricky Nortje from the Durban dog unit, who was seconded to the border police station for two months, on patrol.
Nortje’s job is to search for explosives and guns being smuggled into South Africa, but recently he was in a midnight shoot-out with car thieves whom he found driving toward the border with no headlights on.
As Nortje signalled a Land Rover Discovery to stop the driver shot at him, missing – but hitting another Land Rover.
The resulting gun fight caused the driver of the first Land Rover to panic and he reversed, smashing into a top of the line Mercedes and pushing it into a swamp. The cars were recovered, but the convoys keep coming.
All we encountered on patrol last week were ticks and mosquitos. But the next morning we saw that smugglers had indeed been busy – about 3km from where we had spent the night in the bush.
The first gaping hole we found in the fence had fresh tyre tracks where two vehicles – a 4×4 and a car – had been driven through the fence. The second hole was caused by cattle rustlers who had stolen around 15 head of cattle.
In terms of agreements between the Mozambique and South African governments the South African Police Service (SAPS) is allowed to drive – fully armed and without any authority being needed – up to 20km into Mozambique in pursuit of stolen goods and smugglers.
According to Smith – who keeps a copy of the agreement pinned up on his wall – this is only done in absolutely exceptional circumstances. Instead the SAPS prefers to take Mozambican police with them in cross-border operations.
Because the tyre tracks we found are more than a few hours old they are not followed. The cattle tracks are much fresher and so Smith requests his policemen to follow-up the tracks. Nortje gets to help.
After only a few minutes of liaison the Mozambican Frontier Police are waiting for us on their side of the border, keen to help.
None of the three Mozambican policemen want to see their names in print. In a mixture of Portugese and English they make it clear that crooked policemen and smugglers do not approve of co-operation with the South Africans.
Although the Mozambique police have a base close to the border post they are hamstrung. “We have no vehicles to police with. We must patrol the border on foot. This is hopeless,” complains the youngest of the three.
The Mozambican police carry AK-47s and have instructions to shoot smugglers if they do not surrender immediately.
This seems to be as much of a deterrent to smugglers as a 0,9m fence.
After staying on the tracks of the stolen cattle for some time the Mozambican police point out that tyre tracks have suddenly left the road to disappear into the bush. They want to investigate.
Nortje goes with and it is soon clear we have stumbled upon the tracks of one of the cars that were smuggled over the border that morning.
As Nortje and the Mozambicans explain, after stealing or hijacking a car in South Africa a syndicate will find a driver to move the vehicle across the border.
Once the car is safely inside poorly policed Mozambique it is hidden, then the driver will attempt to link up with a crooked Mozambique policeman who will allow the stolen car safe passage through the numerous road blocks on the road to Maputo where it is sold or exported.
Within a few hundred metres of starting the search Nortje spots a glint from a car windscreen behind dense bush. A Ford Telstar is hidden behind a mass of thorn bushes.
The car is disabled so it cannot be driven away before police return to recover it, then the convoy of Mozambique and South African police continue after the cattle.
The search is stopped an hour later when yet another set of tracks is found leading into the bush. These are followed and reveal a freshly stolen 4×4 Toyota bakkie hidden in dense bush.
Because both vehicles have been found close to the South African border and because the owners can be contacted, the vehicles will be returned to their owners at the border post.
The cattle – the original target of the search – cannot be found.
Moments after returning to eManguzi for our first food and drink in nearly 24 hours, the army arrives with a hijacking victim who has just been robbed of his truck by three men armed with pistols and an AK-47.
Looking up at the sky Nortje observes it is a perfect night for driving without headlights over the border and so the truck must be found before it disappears toward Maputo.
After a three-hour search the truck is found – hidden in bushes on the South African side of the border.
After organising for the truck to be driven back to the police camp Nortje and I head for the showers to pull off the multitude of ticks that braved our insect repellent.
Somewhere, someone was probably cutting the fence even as I pulled the last tick off my elbow.