By Wene Owino.

Botswana and Zimbabwe have had many disagreements in the past, and what has recently become known as the "Rail War" between the two neighbours threatens to put further strain on their shaky relations.

At the centre of the dispute is Zimbabwe's newly constructed railway line linking its second largest city Bulawayo to Beitbridge, a town on the border with South Africa. Botswana, which had all along strongly objected to the building of the link, claims that business on its troubled railways has effectively been killed since Zimbabwe's new line started operating last July.

An official visit by the Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe to Botswana in December failed to yield the intended results: calming down the troubled waters. Instead, Mugabe and his Botswana counterpart, Festus Mogae, referred the matter back to their ministers for the final solution.

Until the building of the new line, Zimbabwe had no direct rail link to South Africa. The National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ), thus, relied totally on Botswana Railways (BR) for the connection. In reprocity, BR relied on an NRZ connection to serve the vast hinterland to the north which goes as far as Congo-Kinshasa.

However, with the construction of the Bulawayo-Beitbridge link, Zimbabwe no longer needs the Botswana connection to South Africa. But Botswana still needs the Zimbabwean connection to serve the northern hinterland. And here lies the problem.

As feared by Bostwana, the new link in Zimbabwe has severely reduced traffic on BR. When the link started operating in July, all rail traffic through Zimbabwe was re-routed to Beitbridge. The NRZ then issued a warning to all the contiguous railway lines that failure to comply with the new re-routing arrangements would not be entertained, because Zimbabwe would not allow northbound traffic to pass through Botswana (in fact through the common border town of Plumtree).

Southbound traffic from Congo-Kinshasa and Zambia through Botswana to South Africa has also been refused entry into Zimbabwe at the border town of Livingstone. Instead the traffic is re-labelled and re-routed to Beitbridge. These actions completely cut off Botswana Railways from serving the northern routes and restricted its traffic to the South Africa-Botswana lines only.

For two days following these decisions, trains plying the South Africa-Botswana route through Zimbabwe were stranded on the Botswana side. The pile-up was only eased when Botswana protested and Zimbabwe allowed the traffic passage after Mogae spoke to Mugabe. Even then, Zimbabwe has continued to redirect almost all international traffic to the Beitbridge line. As a result, the north-south traffic through Botswana has now completely collapsed.

But Botswana would not accept it without a fight. Its position has been that the two countries and their railway lines should abide by the existing bilateral and regional agreements, as well as the relevant contractual obligations between the rail organisations themselves.

BR and NRZ entered into a "business agreement" in 1993 which obligates the two organisations to expedite clearance of through traffic. In 1996, BR, NRZ and Spoornet of South Africa again signed a tripartite memorandum of understanding which provided guidelines on the handling of transit traffic and promotes cost-effective ways of providing the railway service.

When Botswana learnt in 1997 that Zimbabwe wanted to construct the Bulawayo-Beitbridge line, it objected citing these pacts and the 1996 SADC protocol on Transport Communications and Meteorology. Botswana argued that the new line was only going to unnecessarily increase the otherwise excess rail capacity of the SADC region. But Zimbabwe went ahead with the line, regardless.

When Mugabe and Mogae met in December, they agreed that with immediate effect the routing of all international traffic would follow the shortest geographical route with no interception or re-labelling of traffic. BR and NRZ officials were expected to meet and resolve all the outstanding issues by mid-January.

The two presidents also directed their relevant ministers to initiate discussions on the feasibility of joint investment for the development of the Trans-Kgalagadi Kalahari railway.