Late last night a truck was burned in Bayhead Road, the single entry road to Durban Container Terminal, a road infamous for its congestion and hours of waiting.
At this stage it is not known who the perpetrator was nor what the motive was, but it is widely assumed to be related to months of labour unrest at the harbour and dissatisfaction by unemployed truck drivers..
The driver was apparently not injured and this morning trucks continued past the burned wreckage. The flow of fruit has not been affected.
Arson on trucks is not an unusual occurrence at the harbour, according to people working in the logistics sector in Durban. They refer to another truck that was burned three weeks ago, again not hampering operations.
The go-slow at the ports, a de facto but undeclared strike, has been much reported recently, although the general feeling is that things are improving now that the matter has caught the attention of the highest echelons of government.
Last week Transnet Port Terminals suspended eleven workers and the company has given both an apology and an assurance to the automotive industry that they were urgently attending to the ongoing labour problems.
At Durban Container Terminal truck drivers are sometimes waiting for 12 hours and longer in the queue to offload containers, after driving across the country with their load, often journeys of 700km and more.
Over the past year a number of truck drivers have been killed or injured across the country when their trucks were set alight, in protest against the alleged employment of non-South Africa citizens by trucking companies. On the N3 highway leading down to Durban there are reports of trucks brought to a standstill by protesters yesterday.