Civil unrest and brutal police oppression in Mozambique are keeping South African coal, chrome and magnetite from being loaded onto vessels from the Matola Cargo terminal in the port of Maputo.
Fortuitously for the South African fresh produce industry, this time of the year there is no fruit loaded out from Maputo and it's not affected by the closure of the port of Maputo, unlike mineral exports. South African companies have also announced a cessation in operations in areas like construction as a result of the unrest.
The Maputo Fruit Terminal, Mozambique
Post-election violence during which Mozambican opposition politicians have gone into exile in South Africa - at last count 34 protestors had been killed by Mozambican police - has led to South Africa closing the Lebombo border post with their Indian Ocean neighbour after trucks were set alight and cargo disappeared.
Banana producers seem to have been expecting that the border might be closed, a Gauteng market trader remarks, because a spike of bananas had arrived over the past weekend from the south of Mozambique, where a large proportion of South Africa's banana supplies are grown.
He adds that they expect banana supply to become more constrained from next week onwards if the Lebombo border post doesn't re-open in the meantime.
"Our expectation remains to use Maputo later in grape season"
Table grape exporters are also watching Mozambique with concern: the first consignment of Groblersdal/Marble Hall grapes had been earmarked for the end of November, and if current unrest doesn't subside over the coming two or three weeks, that plan might not realise.
A number of grape producers in the Groblersdal/Marble Hall area who had been planning to send their early grapes through Maputo to the Middle East and South East Asia, indicate that they have decided to rather re-route it to the port of Durban as a result of the current unpredictability.
"I think it will clear up and then we'll reconsider," says a Limpopo grape exporter. "But for the moment we have shifted our focus to Durban. Our expectation remains, though, to use Maputo at a later stage of the grape season."
If all goes to plan, early South African mangoes will also start arriving at Maputo from the end of November, as they've been doing for a few years past.