The Road Freight Association has urged members to be prudent and minimise risks of transporting goods on the country’s roads during Economic Freedom Fighters’ (EFF’s) planned Monday shutdown.
Chief Executive Officer Gavin Kelly said businesses have two options for the shutdown: to operate or to mitigate or reduce risk as much as possible.
“We have as the Road Freight Association called on our members and those in the road freight industry who aren’t even our members to think about moving goods tomorrow. Their drivers, their staff, their vehicles, and of course the goods on the trucks are all possibly at risk,” he said.
Minimise risk
Kelly said the last thing they wanted as an industry were scenes of people being hurt or killed and wanton violence during the shutdown.
“So we have said if you can move your goods before Monday… then try to get your clients and your customers to do so. And if you can’t then see if you can’t get that moved after [Monday]… it would be prudent for anyone to try and minimise the risk to both employees and to their assets and their vehicles,” he said.
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The police, Kelly said, have also pleaded for everyone to try and minimise the amount of risk that could be out there as a result of the shutdown so that they could concentrate on those areas where violence does erupt or where there are problems.
He said they were looking forward to a safe South Africa on Monday, adding that the right to protest did not trounce the right to security to freedom, freedom of movement, freedom to economic activity.
Target
The road freight industry was amongst the hardest hit during the July 2021 mayhem in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, with about R24 billion in cargo unable to be moved as the N3 remained closed for eight days
About 250 trucks were destroyed during the protests against the jailing of former president Jacob Zuma, amounting to an estimated R500 million loss in assets and cargo.
Over 40 000 businesses in Durban were torched, looted or damaged during a week of large-scale unrest.
A total of 354 deaths, R50 billion in damages and 150 000 jobs were lost as a result of the civil unrest.
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