South Africa To Make Border Posts Safer, Less Porous

South Africa is committed to ensuring that the country's border ports are safer and less porous to make trade easy while there will be also the legitimate movement of people.

Aaron Motsoaledi, who serves as Minister of Home Affairs, shared on Wednesday that the South African government is committed to upgrading ports to be on par with the current global best practices on border management by using the latest infrastructure and relevant technology.

He admitted that it took his team a while to reach this point as they are now finally ready to upgrade the border posts.

The minister praised his team including the Border Management Authority, the Department of Home Affairs, the Presidency's Infrastructure SA, the National Treasury, SARS, the DBSA's Infrastructure Fund, and the transactional advisors and Bowmans and Ernst & Young for working hard to reach this point.

The minister explained that the South African ports were designed during the apartheid era and aimed towards tightening security. However, it neglected the effective facilitation of regional and international trade.

"Since the advent of democracy, there has been an exponential increase in the number of people moving between South Africa and the countries in the region," he said, SA News reported. "The volume of regional and international trade has similarly increased."

Motsoaledi admitted that South Africa's entry land ports are very congested and it continues to stifle trade, instead of enabling it. He gave an example of Lebombo Border Post between South Africa and Mozambique, where trucks often get lined up for kilometers, for long hours.

"Given the current narrow design of the port, this has led to congestion. The announcement we are making today will make sure that what is happening there, will become history," he said.

The minister further shared that there is a total of 72 entry ports, out of which 53 are land and 11 are international airports while eight are seaports.

"Of the 53 land ports of entry, we have now earmarked six of our largest and busiest, by traffic volume, for redevelopment in order to address the congestion," he said. "The outcome of the redevelopment of these ports of entry will be used as a blueprint in the long-term for all other South Africa's land ports of entry."

The minister continued to explain that the "primary intention is to ensure the realization of regional economic integration in the SADC region while facilitating the realization of the African Continental Free Trade Area."

The government is all set to upgrade or redevelop six entry ports including Beitbridge - Zimbabwe, Lebombo - Mozambique, Maseru Bridge – Lesotho, Ficksburg - Lesotho, Kopfontein - Botswana, and Oshoek - Eswatini.