{"id":7720,"date":"2021-04-04T17:24:03","date_gmt":"2021-04-04T17:24:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/?p=7720"},"modified":"2021-04-04T16:39:16","modified_gmt":"2021-04-04T16:39:16","slug":"trickle-of-easter-weekend-passengers-shows-covids-devastating-impact-on-long-distance-transport-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/trickle-of-easter-weekend-passengers-shows-covids-devastating-impact-on-long-distance-transport-industry","title":{"rendered":"Trickle of Easter weekend passengers shows Covid\u2019s devastating impact on long distance transport industry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/\">Africa-Press<\/a> &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\">South-Africa<\/a>. <\/strong><\/span>With each day that passes during the Covid-19 travel restrictions, the wheels are slowly coming off the long-distance transport industry.<\/p>\n<p>The coronavirus pandemic is wreaking havoc and the industry has had to wrestle with previously unseen hardships, from fleet owners losing buses whose monthly repayments they can no longer service, to having to contend with dwindling commuter numbers.<\/p>\n<p>Normally an Easter holiday weekend such as the current one would see the Lesotho-bound taxis at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital rank choc-a-bloc with the Mountain Kingdom\u2019s nationals catching a ride home.<\/p>\n<p>But on Thursday, just one minibus, that had been loading since 8am, had still not been filled to three-quarters of its capacity nearly four hours later.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs you can see,\u2019\u201d says chairman of the Kopanang Basotho Taxi Association at Bara, Jacob Madonsela, gesturing helplessly, \u201cthere are no people. Before Covid, there would barely be standing room around here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is just hunger,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>He adds: \u201cDecember was better.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The fare from this rank to the four border posts into Lesotho \u2013 Maseru, Wepener, Ficksburg and Butha-Buthe \u2013 is R280. For the ordinary Mosotho, the Easter travel home has attracted another expense, the R300 for the Covid-19 test.<\/p>\n<p>Madonsela laments the myriad reasons his association is seeing a decreasing number of passengers, chief among which is \u201csocial media, which fuels a lot of misinformation about the opening and closing of borders in Lesotho\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>As a result of this, says Madonsela, people who would ordinarily have gone home for Good Friday, chose to stay at work in South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>Inside the lone taxi that\u2019s battling to draw more passengers, one of them, a matronly woman, says she\u2019s going home to Hlotse in Leribe. She would not give her name \u201cnot in the newspapers\u201d, but she says she has to go home \u201cnow and in Christmas\u201d just to make sure all is well. \u201cIt is my house,\u201d she says, \u201cI just have to make sure everything is still fine there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Echoed by fellow commuters, she tells the story of how those who cannot afford the R300 charge for the Covid-19 permit run the gauntlet of the immigration authorities at the borders. It is a harrowing tale.<\/p>\n<p>The Fleet Africa Cross-border rank in Newtown, downtown Joburg, is a community on its own. It has food stalls, hotels and teems with traders of all sorts of wares a long-distance traveller could ever want for the road.<\/p>\n<p>All sorts of purchases are being loaded on the buses for destinations across the border into \u2013 mostly \u2013 Zimbabwe.<\/p>\n<p>Before \u2018the new normal\u2019, the rank saw fleets from about 800 bus companies. These days there are 34 bus operators using the bustling facility. Many of the owners have had their vehicles repossessed by banks for failure to meet their monthly repayments, says the grapevine here.<\/p>\n<p>Those in charge of Fleet Africa brag that it is the only one recognised by the Department of Transport and the City of Johannesburg (CoJ).<\/p>\n<p>Edson Munyai runs Graca Luxury Coaches, that services the Zimbabwean towns of Harare, Mutare and Gokwe. \u201cBuses were full,\u201d Munyai says when asked how things were before the virus hit. \u201cIt\u2019s bad now. Nothing is good.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>From the once-hectic schedule of seven buses, he is now lucky to see one bus leave for Zimbabwe a week. His fleet comprises 65- and 70-seater luxury buses, \u201cbut we can only take 15 or even 10 people on a trip.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe pay more money to transport people. Insurance is up. At the border they open every item to check it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The items taken on these trips range from household furniture, building materials to car parts. Zimbabwean traders who buy their supplies in Joburg also add variety to the stock of goods going on the buses, mostly blankets and trinkets.<\/p>\n<p>Like their competition, Munenzwa Luxury Coaches charges R600 a trip from here to the other side of Beit Bridge. Manager Shepherd Mudadi says their fleet also plies the Cape Town route.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are seeing less and less passengers,\u201d he says ruefully. He tallies up their expenses, from diesel to toll fees (R1 100 one-way in South Africa) and R1 800 for a return trip on Zimbabwean roads.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGoing home is not a problem,\u201d Mudadi shares the experiences of his fares. \u201cIt is coming back into South Africa that is a problem. People do not have permits to enter the country.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As a result, many of the buses ferrying loads of people to Zimbabwe are doing repatriation only and, according to Anna Maphoto and Susan Ndobe of Mzansi Express, \u201cthe buses return empty to South Africa\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Both Ndobe and Maphoto decry the same pain of many affected employees \u2013 reduced salaries, retrenchments and tenants failing to meet their monthly rentals.<\/p>\n<p>There was a time when Mzansi Express used to deploy two buses on one route to Bulawayo and Harare. \u201cNot any more,\u201d says Maphoto, \u201cwe have had some buses repossessed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe were busy every day of the week,\u201d she says. Now, it seems, they are happy to see a trickle of passengers a day.<\/p>\n<p>Andries Shiluvani is chairman of the Traders Association: \u201cThere are 34 formal traders,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>His own kiosk is closed: \u201cThere are no customers to sell to.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Luckily for Shiluvani and other traders, the Johannesburg Property Company (JPC) has put a moratorium on rentals. \u201cIt was R1 100,\u201d says the chairman. \u201cAt least we can breathe easier now because the JPC has stopped rental payments, for now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>[email protected]<\/p>\n<p>The Sunday Independent<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; South-Africa. With each day that passes during the Covid-19 travel restrictions, the wheels are slowly coming off the long-distance transport industry. The coronavirus pandemic is wreaking havoc and the industry has had to wrestle with previously unseen hardships, from fleet owners losing buses whose monthly repayments they can no longer service, to having [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":7719,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,8],"tags":[274,315,275],"class_list":["post-7720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-files","category-homepage-english","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-south-africa","tag-south-africa-2"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Trickle of Easter weekend passengers shows Covid\u2019s devastating impact on long distance transport industry - South 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