Businessman Bongani Philip has condemned the ongoing robbery of truck drivers and burning of the haulage trucks, after one of his trucks was destroyed in an arson attack by unknown individuals.
The seemingly co-ordinated fashion in which the trucks have come under attack, with armed assailants using at least two cars before setting the trucks alight, has raised questions, while the lack of crime intelligence has been questioned.
IOL has reported on a number of these incidents being recorded since the weekend.
Phillip who runs a successful coal export company LI Coal Clean Coal Gasification (Pty) Ltd, with a fleet of about 20 trucks, said the excuse that the trucking industry is targeted because it employs foreign nationals is false and misleading.
“I can tell you now, the grievances of these faceless individuals who we do not know who they are – but our black people know who they are – is based on false premise that the trucking industry is dominated or employing largely foreigners,” Phillip said in an interview with broadcaster Newzroom Afrika.
“We do have 20 drivers, all of those drivers are South Africans. This morning I have two drivers, with their families, who will find themselves unemployed. These drivers are from Eastern Cape and the families that are going to suffer are South African black people. There is not a single foreigner that we are employing in our business both in terms of export and in trucking,” Phillip said during the televised interview.
“We are employing South Africans because as we all know, you would have a cousin (who wants the job) what is called the black tax. There is no black person who can employ any foreigner when we know that we have a burden of black tax. We have zero foreigners that we are employing in our business.”
Phillip said he received information on Wednesday morning from his staff that one of his trucks was burn between Ermelo and Piet Retief in Mpumalanga while it was travelling to Richards Bay.
“We are an exporting company that is using our own trucking company as well to truck our coal to the port for exporting to various countries in Europe. As a company we were trying to assist some of the crisis happening within our rail industry in the country. We then took a decision to buy additional trucking fleet to assist in our business,” told Newzroom Afrika.
Phillip said the burning of trucks is a sad epoch in the history of South Africa.
“This is a sad story. You are talking here to a black child whose mother was a tea girl, and whose father was a farm worker, and who grew up knowing poverty very well. I grew up in the time of apartheid and it is very sad that we find that, given that background, we suffered under apartheid and suffering under the democracy again, we find ourselves being targeted by criminal elements,” he said.
He said the arson attacks are economic sabotage.
On Tuesday, IOL reported another three trucks had been torched in Limpopo, bringing to 14 the number of trucks destroyed. This followed attacks in KZN that saw two more trucks destroyed on Monday night.
Police Minister Bheki Cele revealed on Wednesday that at least 21 haulage trucks have been attacked and burnt in Kwa-Zulu Natal, Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces in recent days.
IOL