Blood money

Our continent and country’s trucking industry runs on courage, fear and silence. As JIM WARD notes, behind every delayed load lies a human story that few in logistics ever stop to consider.

Several interest groups are covering South Africa’s trucking industry. I try to keep tabs on those who seem most attuned to driver sentiment and the daily experiences they have, because it is both interesting and informative. Lately, it has also become very graphic in nature.

Over the last few months, I have been struck by the unusually high level of violence that often features on these trucking posts and videos. There are the usual accident clips, often caused by the risky behaviour of taxis or truck drivers themselves and the appalling driving of private motor vehicles, but that is common to many countries.

Where Africa differs is the routine, grinding and constant theme of inherent danger – the common scenes of young, skinny gunmen with AK-47s emerging from the bush (particularly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and holding drivers to ransom at gunpoint, either for their cargo, fuel or personal belongings.

This theme permeates online content. It is there in the frightening hijacking scenes caught on cab cameras, where young, armed and instantly violent hijackers invade a cab, threatening the life of the driver or assaulting them before making off with the vehicle (they all know how to drive trucks).

It is there as drivers warily open a door of their parked truck to investigate noises outside – thieves stealing wheels, batteries, the cargo or diesel – and are immediately assaulted or threatened at gunpoint.

It is there as drivers use nylon load straps to “ratchet their doors together” at night, from door pull to door pull, so they cannot easily be forced open. What quality of rest can that person have? The tension in that load strap is symbolic of the tension with which they live.

It is the men driving unmarked cars, cutting in front of trucks and forcing them off the road – again at gunpoint – or police and immigration officials stopping drivers and demanding bribes to allow the truck to continue.

Counterpoised to this, sometimes the tables are turned; the tension and frustration boils over, as drivers video fellow drivers punishing criminals – like when they apprehend one in the act of disconnecting trailer ABS cables or suzy hoses to snatch them off a truck in slow-moving traffic. 

One thief who was caught in Maputo recently was instantly stripped and given a roadside beating by infuriated drivers, with gleeful pedestrians joining in for good measure. The man then received a lengthy public thrashing with a plank, prostrated over concrete steps with his trousers pulled down while others restrained him.

There are also scenes of drugged-up junkies clambering onto the footplate, trying to force open cab doors while the truck is moving, usually with a frank and meaningful exchange of views between the thug and the driver, who swears at the unwanted passenger and begins travelling too quickly for them to be able to get off without injury. They normally try to extort money before they leave.

The damaging normality of violence

It is the everyday normality of violence that concerns me. What is the lasting effect on the psyche of drivers and assistants? How do they handle these incidents and how does this affect their lives? How many of them ever get properly debriefed or counselled after being held up at gunpoint, or pistol-whipped for not handing over a cellphone or being reluctant to divulge the PIN to a cash card? How do they process this trauma?

Does it ever occur to the spiky-haired young dispatcher administering a tongue lashing and shouting accusations at a driver twice their age (from a safe distance of several hundred kilometres) that the reason the load is behind schedule is that the driver has just lived through one of these episodes? Witnessed a fatal accident firsthand, or watched as a cash-in-transit van got blown up in front of them? Seen armed guards gunned down, killed in broad daylight?

If the opening is never given, the right questions are never asked, the indifferent exchange consists only of one-way communication and the interaction is merely a dressing down, the traumatised driver loses their humanity.

A thorn in the flesh

Often, these things get swept away, disregarded or glossed over – swept under the logistics carpet of urgency and haste. But they remain, like a thorn in the flesh, festering and creating grievances down the line, when an entire history of wrongdoings and lack of understanding get aired, invariably at the most damaging moment: in a shop stewards meeting, a dismissal hearing, or an accident enquiry…

There is no easy solution to the horrific level of violence in South Africa (and often across Africa) in all its forms. It is irrevocably tied to the burden of generations and our bloody history of oppression and exploitation.

What we can do – no, what we must do – is spare a thought for the human condition of those exposed to this violence, walk a mile in their shoes and not automatically assume that any mistake or a delayed load is invariably the driver’s fault. That mindset is as callous as the violence itself. There may be reasons behind the delay that go far beyond our sheltered imaginations.

Blood doesn’t show on shipping manifests, but it’s there – in every late arrival, every exhausted face. Compassion isn’t weakness in logistics, it’s an overdue recognition of reality.