South African Border Posts “Not Built For These Numbers”, Says BMA

South Africa’s Border Management Authority (BMA) says the main reason for delays at the country’s land borders is the very high number of people and vehicles crossing. The volume of traffic is far greater than what the border posts were designed to handle.

Speaking on SABC News, BMA Commissioner Michael Masiapato said the land borders can no longer cope with the number of travellers and vehicles, especially during the festive season. This leads to long, winding queues that frustrate travellers. He said:

“One of the biggest realities that we are facing is the fact that these borders that we have, especially the land borders, as you will know, we really inherited them from the apartheid past.

“They were never built for the purposes of moving the volumes in terms of the people that we deal with, but also they were not designed for the purposes of the numbers of trucks that we deal with, the passenger vehicles, the number of taxis that we deal with, the buses.”

Masiapato said the South African government is exploring public–private partnerships to improve border infrastructure so that it can handle large volumes of both people and vehicles more efficiently. He said:

“There is work that is underway, as we always emphasise, the public-private partnership that is going to help us to redesign this port to make sure that we are able to do the work. But that’s the fundamental issue.

“If you think about, for example, the exit leg, the challenges we dealt with at Lebombo around the issue of corridor management.

“Once again, the port becomes a strangled place because the entire N4 becomes open, you get to the port is very squeezed.

“Now, in terms of the return leg, indeed, if you talk about Beitbridge, a lot of buses that come through from the continent, coming from Malawi, coming from Zambia and all of the other places coming through into the port. And therefore, we have to facilitate all of these.

“Hence, we then operate by creating temporary processing areas within the port, makeshift processing areas using park homes and all of those.

“And sometimes in those particular areas, you do have some challenges in terms of systems, computers and all of that.

“But we do the best with what we have to be able to deal with the volumes.”

Masiapato added that the BMA has brought in other security agencies, including the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), to deal with criminals who may try to enter the country illegally.

He said the SANDF has helped by deploying marine units to patrol the Limpopo River using speedboats to prevent border jumpers from crossing.

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