he acting commissioner of the Border Management Authority (BMA), Major General David Chilembe, says more than 35,000 foreign nationals have left South Africa through the Beitbridge Border Post in Limpopo.
He provided an update on South Africa’s repatriation programme on Thursday.
Chilembe was focusing on the Beitbridge Port of Entry in Musina, where most repatriation activities are now taking place following the closure of the Durban Repatriation Centre.
“We are today here at Beit Bridge, which is a border between South Africa and Zimbabwe, where we are busy with three processes: deportation processes, voluntary repatriation, and the normal facilitation of movement of people and goods,” he said.
“Since we started here on the 7th, when the president announced the measures that we have to put in place with regard to migration issues, we have dealt with more than 35,000 people that we have repatriated and deported through this border post,” Chilembe said.
He added that on Wednesday, authorities processed about 2,400 people, including 1,700 Malawian citizens and about 700 Zimbabweans.
“The issue that we’re dealing with here is that when it comes to Malawians, as you know, this border post connects South Africa with Zimbabwe.”
“In order for us to facilitate Malawians, we need the Malawian authority to take over the process from us in order for them to be facilitated through Zimbabwe,” he said.
“That is a challenge that we’re currently having because the Malawian authorities seem as if they are being overwhelmed by the high numbers of people that are crossing.”
Chilembe said buses had already been arranged for transport, with additional vehicles still expected.
“So we are ready, but you can see the border post itself is not busy; it’s only the repatriation process that we’re going through.”
He said one of the main challenges in the process is citizenship verification to ensure that individuals are correctly identified and not wrongly repatriated.
“The other issue is crime – those that are involved in crime. That’s why we’re going through the fingerprint process, so that if we find somebody trying to evade the process by getting into this repatriation system, we can identify them and deal with them,” he said.
He added that authorities are introducing a new holding area for Malawian and Zimbabwean nationals passing through the port to streamline processing.
Meanwhile, the Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) on Migration will visit the Beitbridge Border Post in Limpopo to assess border management and migration operations at South Africa’s busiest land port of entry.
