How corruption and neglect are killing Southern Africa’s key trade route

Southern Africa’s once-vital North-South Corridor, anchored at Durban’s port, is rapidly losing its competitive edge amid failing infrastructure, corruption, and rising alternatives that threaten South Africa’s logistics leadership. As a result, this vitally important corridor faces a bleak future, warns MIKE FITZMAURICE.

The port of Durban, a crucial trade hub for Southern Africa and the North-South Corridor, is grappling with severe inefficiencies that are undermining its performance and harming the broader economy. These shortcomings are evident in sluggish container handling rates, prolonged ship turnaround times, and extensive delays, which are inflicting financial losses on businesses and stalling regional integration.

Transnet’s inability to address these challenges stems from poor leadership, chronic underinvestment, and widespread corruption that has hollowed out the organisation. Meanwhile, Beitbridge – the key border post on the North-South Corridor – recently underwent a US$300 million modernisation, making it Africa’s most technically advanced border. Yet exorbitant border access fees of around US$200 per crossing (both northbound and southbound) have discouraged transit cargo bound for Zambia and the DRC. Instead, transporters now favour the Groblersbrug/Martins Drift route through Botswana and the newly completed Kazungula Bridge, supported by upgraded one-stop border posts (OSBPs) on either side of the Zambezi.

Exacerbating Zimbabwe’s decline as a transit route are atrocious road conditions and harassment of compliant transporters by poorly-informed anti-smuggling units, causing unacceptable delays. ZIMRA’s measures, including 100% scanning of cargo at key posts such as Beitbridge and Chirundu, have created long queues and excessive crossing times.

Further discouraging use of Beitbridge, tanker operators face onerous upfront duties when transporting fuel through Zimbabwe – a measure intended to curb fraud. This has led many operators to reroute through Botswana, substantially increasing traffic along the Groblersbrug leg of the corridor.

However, infrastructure at Groblersbrug is wholly inadequate for the rising volumes. On the South African side, there are no parking facilities within the border control zone, leaving the border dependent on two mismanaged truck parks. Originally intended for tankers and specialised cargo, the first has devolved into a general goods parking area, while the other – a dirt-lot truck park near the border – has become a shortcut for drivers seeking to jump queues on the N11.

Priority queuing on the N11, intended for trucks cleared by SARS to proceed, is rendered ineffective due to poor law enforcement, turning the road into a free-for-all that allows queue jumping and undermines orderly processing.

Groblersbrug is also highly vulnerable to flooding from the Limpopo River during the rainy season. Flooding has already closed the border for nearly a month on two separate occasions in 2025, forcing transporters to reroute through Kopfontein and Skilpadshek. These alternative posts are themselves ill-equipped, resulting in 20-km queues and delays of three to four days. Further north, border posts like Kasumbalesa, Mokambo, and Sakania continue to suffer from poor infrastructure and legislative unpredictability. Frequent changes in Congolese regulations and new tolls on bypass roads have made the DRC a costly and unreliable final leg of the North-South Corridor.

Copper exports from the DRC and Zambia, once transported in high volumes via the southbound route of the North–South Corridor to the Port of Durban, have been further eroded by the high risk of hijackings and threats of violence from the All Truck Drivers Forum (ATDF). The ATDF has been implicated in numerous violent attacks on foreign trucks and drivers in South Africa. Consequently, mines have been deterred from using this corridor, opting instead for the safer alternative routes via the ports of Walvis Bay, Dar es Salaam, and (to a lesser extent) the Port of Beira.

All these factors have played into the hands of the Walvis Bay Corridor Group, which, through road upgrades and the development of the Western Corridor, offers Zambia and the DRC a faster, more efficient route to Namibia’s port of Walvis Bay. Walvis Bay already handles more copper and cobalt exports than Durban, and with further infrastructure improvements – including the Katima Mulilo border upgrade – these volumes will only grow.

The Dar Corridor, via the Nakonde/Tunduma border to Dar es Salaam, currently moves around 70% of DRC’s copper. With the new OSBP on the Zambian side under construction, even greater volumes will shift east. Meanwhile, the Lobito Rail Corridor promises bulk copper and cobalt exports through Angola’s port of Lobito, further eroding the North-South Corridor’s relevance.

Although Transport Minister Barbara Creecy recently announced plans to reform Transnet and invest in ports like Durban, Richards Bay, and Cape Town, these efforts are too little, too late. Ambitious goals to shift freight from road to rail are undermined by South Africa’s decimated rail network – a legacy of vandalism and mismanagement accelerated during the Zuma administration – and are unlikely to materialise in the foreseeable future. Adding to investor uncertainty is Eskom’s struggle to maintain electricity supply amid ageing infrastructure, casting doubt over South Africa’s reliability as a regional logistics hub.

All these factors point to a stark reality: the North-South Corridor, long rooted in the port of Durban, is steadily losing its strategic importance.