Border Management Authority SA commissioner Mike Masiapato on Sunday revealed that over a 10-day period during Easter nearly 4,000 people were intercepted attempting to enter the country illegally.
Addressing a media briefing, Masiapato said 2,403 of those intercepted did not have any documents at all. Another 1,019 individuals were refused entry for being undesirable and 419 were found inadmissible to enter the country due to various reasons.


“The majority of those arrested without documents were intercepted at the vulnerable segments of the borderline. They were processed, declared undesirable for five years, and were deported. Most of the inadmissible individuals were found with invalid passports, fraudulent visas or just failed to produce relevant documents such as valid yellow fever certificates, especially those travelling from yellow fever endemic countries,” Masiapato said.

“Incrementally, since the first deployment of the border guards, the authority has managed to intercept and stop more than 281,000 individuals who attempted to enter South Africa illegally.”

Security had been strengthened at the borders during this time, with Masiapato saying 400 junior border guards had been deployed at some land ports to “assist in the critical role of sanitising the border environment and ensuring the uninterrupted facilitation of the legitimate movement of people and goods across the ports.`

On a more positive note, the authority said during the Easter period, they observed a reduction in the number of undocumented and or unaccompanied minors arriving at South African ports of entry.

However on March 28, they intercepted about five children at the Beitbridge port of entry, Masiapato said.

They handed them to colleagues from the department of social development who activated the social workers at Musina.

“They later engaged their Zimbabwean counterparts and processed the children back to Zimbabwe to be reconciled with their respective families. Another incident involving a child was at Grobler’s Bridge port of entry where a woman was attempting to exit South

Africa to the Democratic Republic of Congo via Botswana.

“The supposed ‘mother’ did not have a passport but was carrying an emergency travel document (ETD) which was issued by the embassy of the DRC and the child was completely undocumented. They were both handed over to colleagues from the department of social development who processed and took them to a place of safety in Limpopo,” he said.
South Africa`s borders were busier this year in comparison to last year.

The authority said they facilitated 1,136,250 travellers across 71 ports of entry in 10 days. In the same period last year, 913 859 travellers were processed - meaning there were over 222 000 more travellers this year. Masiapato said as the norm, OR Tambo International Airport, Lebombo port of entry to Mozambique and Beitbridge port of entry to Zimbabwe remained the top three ports which processed the majority of travellers at 528,042.

“OR Tambo facilitated the most travellers at 217,855, followed by Lebombo at 157 069 and ⁠Beitbridge at 153,118 travellers.”

Many holidaymakers opted for ship cruises this year.

The authority said it noted an increase in the number of holidaymakers boarding cruise ships at Cape Town Harbour bound for various destinations.

“In facilitating the movements across all our modalities, we processed 36,675 private vehicles, 1,893 minibus taxis and 1,309 buses. In terms of air travel, we processed over more than 2,621 aircraft at our various international airports,” the authority said,

“For the sea modality, we processed about 252 vessels across our seaports of which 119 were for crew changes through the off-port limit mechanism. This has to do with the facilitation of crew changes for vessels that have not docked at the port. During the implementation of this plan on people movement, we deployed proactive preventive measures for the speedy detection of non-compliances on the set port protocols,” Masiapato said. V.5303

There are fears that more people will be separated by the introduction of a minimum salary level for those wanting UK family visas. Families living in the UK and abroad have raised concerns about what new rules will mean for them as they try to reunite with foreign spouses. In December, the Home Office, which says migration to the UK is too high, announced a package of measures to reduce net migration, following a spike in arrival numbers. V.5318
Click here for full article

An Ethiopian asylum seeker, who does not speak English, claims he was duped by a senior immigration official into paying an admission of guilt fine when he thought he was paying for bail.Two Western Cape High Court judges have condemned the official`s `deplorable` behaviour, set aside the fine, and ordered the immigration official be taken off the case. Tsegaye Esyas claims Annelise van Dyk treated him like an animal which led to him attempt suicide while in police cells. V.5320
Click here for full article

EREMY MAGGS: I want to stay with crime now. Individuals with a criminal record may be faced with significant challenges when seeking employment, I think that’s a given. Here in South Africa, employers may legally exclude an applicant from consideration for a position if having a clean criminal record is what is termed an inherent requirement of the job. That phrase, inherent requirement, is important, but what exactly does that mean, and when can an applicant be lawfully excluded for having a criminal record? V.5321
Click here for full article

As a South African who has adopted a nomadic work lifestyle alongside my wife, Ingrid Lotze, I’ve been an interested observer of South Africa’s snail-pace digital nomad visa (DNV) development process. Despite the optimism surrounding its introduction, the visa seems to miss several crucial marks for digital nomads like us. V.5322
Click here for full article

DA MP says hours lost continue to result in persons being unable to collect their ID documents due to unmanageable queues The DA has been inundated with complaints that the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) systems are offline, resulting in long queues and delayed processing of documents. Through questions posed to the Minister, the DA can now reveal that the DHA has lost over 77 years’ worth of working hours due to system downtime and load-shedding from 2019 to date. Concerningly, this data only relates to hours lost for the application of smart IDs, meaning decades more of working hours could have been additionally lost in other spheres such as passport or visa applications. V.5314
Click here for full article

Home Affairs’ seemingly endless court battles set the department back more than R110-million between April 2023 and the end of February this year. This was revealed in a written parliamentary response by minister Aaron Motsoaledi. He said the department accumulated a litigation bill of R117 692 996.3, higher than the R72 637 944.51 spent the year before. V.5315
Click here for full article

Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) this week revealed that Cape Town International Airport (CTIA) has achieved a ground-breaking milestone by processing more than 10 million passengers over a single financial year. This is the highest number of regional and international passengers processed since COVID-19 V.5316
Click here for full article

In recent years, South Africa has seen a significant influx of immigrants from various African countries, as well as other parts of the world. This has raised important questions about the country`s immigration policies and their impact on job creation for both locals and immigrants. The South African immigration system, like many other countries, is a complex and ever-evolving process that aims to balance the country`s economic needs with its social and cultural interests. Let`s take a closer look at how this system intersects with job creation in South Africa. The South African government implemented the Immigration Act of 2002, which outlines the country`s immigration policies and procedures. Under this act, foreigners are required to obtain a visa or permit to enter, work, or study in South Africa. The type of visa or permit required depends on the intended purpose of the individual`s visit and their country of origin. V.5312
Click here for full article

Due to system downtime and load-shedding, the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) lost nearly 141,000 hours of Smart ID application and production time between the 2019/20 and 2022/23 financial years. Minister Aaron Motsoaledi revealed this figure in a recent response to questions raised in Parliament by Democratic Alliance MP Adrian Roos. Motsoaledi provided a breakdown of smart ID production and application hours lost to technical difficulties and load-shedding per province for each financial year from 2019/2020. These disruptions hit home Affairs offices in the Eastern Cape the hardest, with over 34,000 hours to rotational power cuts and system downtime. Mpumalanga offices lost the next-highest number of hours at 17 V.5313
Click here for full article

Home Affairs Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi has said the public has shown great support for the final White Paper on citizenship, immigration and refugee protection which appeared in the Government Gazette on Wednesday. Briefing the media, he addressed what he saw as a long-overdue need to replace an outdated Citizenship Act, as well as enact proposed changes to existing legislation. V.5306
Click here for full article