Follow our journey from Cape Town to Lusaka via Botswana. Enjoy the elephants and the ‘Smoke that Thunders’ with us. We’ve been in Lusaka for 3 weeks. We left Cape Town on 24 January and arrived in Lusaka on 7 February. We’ve been stuck here since.
We need patience whilst we push on through the bureaucratic complexities and corruptions as we try to get our vehicle imported duty-free. We had only anticipated this importation process to take 2 days.
Zambian Bureaucracy and Corruption
We have been in communication with our Zambian Clearing Agent, Philip (who works with Cargo Management & Logistics) since November 2021. He has been advising me on the process and helping us to get the correct documents in place 3 months prior to us crossing the border into Zambia.
However, for some inexplicable reason, we still have unnecessary delays here in Lusaka whilst we try to import and register this vehicle. Some people here have told us that if we pay some bribes, it will go quicker. As Christians, this goes against our conscience. So it seems it may take longer still.
Reasons for delay
We are currently waiting for the duty-free status to be “activated on the Zambian Revenue Authority (ZRA) system” according to Philip. This duty-free status we successfully applied for and obtained on Tuesday (22 February). Once this is activated on the ZRA system, we can then begin the registration process of the vehicle – which allegedly takes two or three days.
