When traffic enforcement turns into highway extortion

South Africa’s freight corridors are being undermined by abusive roadside enforcement, argues MIKE FITZMAURICE, vice president, Southern Africa, of the African Union of Transportation and Logistics Organizations (UAOTL). He says intimidation, extortion and unlawful practices are strangling regional trade and competitiveness.

Southern Africa moves on trucks. Every tonne of copper from Zambia, every pallet of perishables from Durban and every container bound for Maputo, Gaborone or Lusaka moves because a driver turned a key and took to the road.

Yet, for many transporters, one of the most costly and intimidating hazards on those roads is no longer simply potholes, hijackers or fatigue. Increasingly, operators allege that it is the conduct of some of the very officials appointed to ensure road safety. What should be a professional compliance check can become confrontation, intimidation and delay. For compliant transporters, the stories are becoming disturbingly familiar.

A culture of intimidation

Drivers report abrasive and authoritarian treatment at roadblocks. Reasoned discussion can be interpreted as defiance. A driver may produce a valid professional driving permit, cross-border permit, passport and work visa along with the vehicle’s roadworthy documentation, yet still find themselves embroiled in an argument with an official.

These allegations cannot simply be dismissed. Mpumalanga’s Department of Community Safety, for example, previously launched an investigation after video footage emerged showing traffic officers involved in a violent confrontation with a truck driver on the N4 near Komatipoort. Other footage and allegations involving drivers on major freight corridors continue to circulate.

Transporters have also reported cases in which drivers have allegedly been physically restrained and assaulted. Whatever circumstances precede an incident, violence cannot become an accepted part of traffic enforcement. Drivers are entitled to lawful enforcement; officers are entitled to cooperation – neither is above the law.

Deflating tyres is not punishment

One of the most troubling practices reported by operators is the deliberate deflation of truck tyres at roadblocks. There is an important distinction between removing a genuinely dangerous vehicle from the road and using a vehicle itself as an instrument of punishment.

Traffic officials have powers to act when a vehicle is unsafe, unroadworthy or presents a danger to other road users. Those powers exist for good reason. But a tyre should not be deflated because an argument has occurred, because a driver has challenged an instruction or because an official wishes to assert authority.

A heavy commercial vehicle tyre can cost between R8,000 and R15,000. Leaving a loaded truck immobilised at the roadside can expose valuable cargo to theft, place the driver at risk and create substantial consequential losses for the operator. It may also create another roadside safety hazard. Enforcement must make roads safer; it should never make them more dangerous.

Documents should not become bargaining chips

Another serious complaint concerns the retention of drivers’ licences, passports and identity documents while payment of a roadside fine is demanded. Drivers need to understand both their obligations and their rights.

Officials are entitled to request the documentation required by law and to establish whether a driver and vehicle are legally entitled to be on the road. Where an offence has been committed, there are prescribed processes for issuing notices, summonses and other enforcement action. Personal documentation, however, should never become leverage in a roadside dispute.

For a foreign driver, the seizure of a passport can be particularly serious. It can leave that driver stranded in another country and unable to continue an international journey. Cross-border operators have repeatedly raised allegations concerning demands for roadside payments on approaches to border posts. These claims are damaging not only to individual officers or agencies, but to South Africa’s reputation as a regional transport hub.

When the facilitator becomes another checkpoint

The Cross-Border Road Transport Agency (C-BRTA) has an especially important role. Its mandate should support safe, orderly and efficient cross-border transport. Operators therefore need the agency to function as a facilitator of regional trade, not simply another point at which the same documents are repeatedly demanded.

Transporters report being stopped by C-BRTA officials some distance from borders and subjected to checks they believe duplicate those already conducted by other authorities. Duplication costs time; time costs money… and in road freight, delays are never isolated events. They affect delivery windows, driver hours, vehicle utilisation, port slots, warehouses, customers and, ultimately, the price of goods.

The real non-tariff barrier

This is where the problem extends far beyond the relationship between one driver and one traffic officer. Poorly managed enforcement can become a non-tariff barrier to trade.

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is intended to increase intra-African commerce by reducing barriers, improving border procedures and creating a more integrated continental market. Those ambitions mean little if a compliant truck can move through a border only to spend hours detained unnecessarily along the corridor beyond it.

Trade facilitation is not solely a customs issue. It involves transport ministries, road authorities, border agencies, police services, ports, freight forwarders and every other institution capable of either accelerating or obstructing the movement of goods. Southern Africa cannot talk enthusiastically about trade integration while tolerating behaviour that makes cross-border transport slower, more unpredictable and more expensive.

Every lost hour has a price

Consider the North-South Corridor linking South African ports and industrial centres with markets further north: every unnecessary hour spent beside the road has consequences. A missed port slot can trigger further delays. Perishable cargo can deteriorate. Drivers can exceed permissible working hours. Customers can miss production schedules. Vehicles that should already be completing another trip remain idle. Multiply those losses across thousands of trucks and the consequences extend far beyond the transport industry: the region becomes less competitive.

Enforcement is essential

None of this is an argument against traffic enforcement. Responsible transporters want dangerous vehicles removed from the road. They want overloaded trucks stopped. They want unlicensed drivers, unsafe equipment and operators who ignore legislation dealt with firmly.

Bad operators undermine responsible ones. But rigorous enforcement and professional enforcement should be the same thing. A lawful roadblock should not frighten a compliant driver.

What needs to change

First, any allegations of assault and deliberate property damage must be investigated properly. Where evidence establishes criminal conduct, those responsible should face the same legal consequences as anyone else. Second, clear national guidance is required on the retention of passports, driving licences and other personal documents. Officials and drivers alike need certainty about what may lawfully be retained, when and for what purpose.

Third, there must be greater transparency in roadside enforcement. Body-worn cameras, written reasons for enforcement actions, receipts and clearly identifiable badge numbers would protect both officers and drivers when disputes arise. Fourth, transporters need a credible independent reporting mechanism for alleged abuse on major freight corridors. Linking complaints to existing regional non-tariff barrier reporting structures would allow recurring trouble spots to be identified rather than treating every complaint as an isolated incident.

Finally, officers working on strategic freight routes should understand the economic role those corridors play. A traffic officer standing beside the N3 or N4 is not simply regulating one truck. That officer is standing on a supply chain linking factories, farms, mines, ports and consumers across several countries.

Drivers are not punching bags

Transporters are not asking for immunity from the law. Compliant operators want enforcement. What they reject is arbitrary enforcement, intimidation and abuse. Drivers are not punching bags. They are men and women doing one of the toughest jobs in the regional economy, often spending days away from their families while moving the food, fuel, machinery, medicine and raw materials on which Southern Africa depends.

South Africa cannot afford freight corridors where operators fear the people responsible for policing them. If abusive practices are allowed to continue, Africa will not need foreign tariffs to undermine regional trade. We will be doing the damage ourselves – one unnecessary roadblock, one detained driver and one immobilised truck at a time.