By James Hall
JOHANNESBURG, Dec 18 2001 (IPS)

The lesson of the colourful informal community of commerce that has emerged at the Lomahasha border connecting Mozambique with Swaziland is that when faced with survival, inventiveness becomes a necessity and co-operation an essential.

“We are struggling traders, and not people who were ever at war, but we are emerging out of conditions created by war,” says Humberto Sabacor, a cashew vendor whose pickup truck is weighed down with tins and sacks of the crescent-shaped nuts.

He purchases them from growers in the southern Maputo region, and brings them to the only border post officially open between his Indian Ocean homeland and the landlocked kingdom of Swaziland.

At any given time, a thriving if completely ad hoc community of about a hundred vendors, their assistants and often family members have turned the hot and hilly location spotted by flat-top acacia trees into a bazaar whose distinctive flavour combines the cultures of two peoples.

Swazis and Mozambicans are both each other’s buyers and sellers. Sabacor’s principal client is a middleman who resells the cashews to Swaziland’s main tourist hotels.

Bargaining between the men is more earnest than usual due to the depreciation of the Swazi currency, requiring an adjustment in the price of nuts, but business is conducted in friendship.

“I’ve bought from Humberto since 1998, and because I’m a dependable customer, he has gotten many farmers to grow cashews as their only cash crops. I provide them with a livelihood,” says the Swazi middleman, who prefers not to give his name because he has come to Lomahasha to avoid paying customs duties.

Swazi and Mozambican customs officials are too overburdened elsewhere to police the distant border post, which is far from the nearest town of either country.

The traders settlement is a bustling place of no permanent structures, just a motley, ever-changing array of cars, trucks and buses. The amount of money changing hands is not tax revenue worth pursuing, in the view of an official at Swaziland’s treasury department.

“Mozambique customs officials are not bothered by us, because they must devote their attention to their prime occupation, which is shaking down travellers coming through the post for bribes,” says Florence Simelane, a Swazi on her way to the Mozambique capital Maputo for a Christmas visit with relatives.

The Swazi ethnic group originated in what is present-day Maputo, and migrated southwest under the first Swazi King, Dlamini I, in the 16th century. Cultural links between the people remained strong, even as Mozambique was colonised by the Portuguese, and Swaziland became a British protectorate.

Mozambique President Joaquin Chissano on a November visit to Swaziland promised to improve customs operations at Lomahasha, and open other border posts closed during the country’s decades-long civil war. It was during those years that the trading culture took root.

“With the war, farmers could not go to some markets because of the fighting, and the roads were mined, so they came to trade with Swazis along the border,” recalls Alberto Sarmento, a bus driver from Goba, Mozambique. “That is when all the holes were cut in the border fences.”

The holes were used to smuggle a variety of goods including animals. “The cattle rustlers were driving Swazi cattle into Mozambique, and Mozambique cattle into Swaziland, and stolen cars were going from South Africa up through Swaziland and into Mozambique on their way to Zambia,” he says.

The cessation of civil war hostilities did not diminish the informal border trading, which dealt primarily with agricultural products from both countries, and was often conducted through barter.

Post-civil war reconstruction was a time of great want for Mozambique, which until two years ago was ranked the most impoverished country on earth. Rural Swaziland of the Lubombo Region where the Lomahasha border is located is also a poor place.

“The poor know what to do to get along,” says Sarmento. “That is why you can get anything at this place.”

Indeed, hair care products, hardware, auto parts, cellular telephones, alcohol and cigarettes, sweets in bulk, household appliances, and especially used clothing abound. Women display these wares on small wooden tables or spread out on blankets on the ground.

There is no such thing as trading licenses, and the extemporaneous operations can be packed away in an instant in case of trouble from the authorities, which occasionally happens when a policeman is on the prowl for a bribe.

“But really even the cops are not greedy here, because we are a community,” says Stella de Sousa, who sells blankets purchased in Maputo to Swazis. She sells them at a price slightly higher than blankets sold in Swazi towns, but which offer a saving because her customers need not travel to distant urban centres.

“We give these cops a little gift, and they go away,” she says. “If any of them gets cute, we have our own form of justice.”

Allegedly, a gang of tsosti (thugs) collects protection money from the vendors, and deals harshly with thieves and other violators of the informal community’s operations. With only a handful of police assigned to monitor the operations of the border post, these vigilantes keep order in the trader settlement.

Health officials from both countries are alarmed by the absence of toilets and a water supply. Water is fetched from a small stream, which is also used by local people for washing, and by cattle. Most vendors arrive with containers of water for their use.

They also have dug corrugated iron pit latrines, the settlement’s only “permanent” structures.

Come nightfall, only a few people remain. They group around small fires, roasting meat and maize cobs, and frying fish. The meat comes from Swazi cattle, the fish from the Indian Ocean off Mozambique.

One of the most sought-after commodities by customers who come to the traders settlement are prawns, whose price has risen to 20 U.S. dollars a kilo this month — a bargain at most places but big money at Lomahasha.

A radio plays traditional Swazi songs, while another emits the Afro-Latin rhythms favoured on the streets of Maputo.

At this latitude the summer sun sets early, and it is dark by 7 p.m. Sunrise come at 4:30, however, by which time a hundred transient residents have returned to the daily bazaar that seems so scruffy and untameable but full of vitality, and in its own way a tradition.

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