Ships are starting to bypass SA ports as Transnet tells customers and staff of ‘sabotage’

SHIPS have started to bypass South African ports, and many more may now do so, after Transnet delcared force majeure at its port operations on Monday.

Container vessels that had been due to call at both Cape Town and Durban had been diverted, shipping agents said, in one case to the Port of Maputo, and in other onwards to its Asian stops, bypassing the continent entirely.

Importers – already struggling with shortages of key goods – will now have longer to wait for containers on those ships. Just how long is not yet clear; a global shipping crisis and shortage of some types of containers already has the industry overall scrambling.

Those same troubles have made shipping lines allergic to delays they cannot quantify.

In a statement on Tuesday morning, Transnet said its force majeure declaration on Transnet Port Terminals ” is expected to be lifted soon”, but provided no other details on its