Lebombo border protests 'well managed' - Schreiber

Mozambique has been rocked by unrest since the October 9 presidential election, when the Frelimo party, in power since 1975, won in a vote denounced as fraudulent by the opposition.

The closure followed reports of vehicles being torched on the Mozambican side of the Lebombo Port of Entry.

Schreiber delivered the keynote address at the BMA conference and Expo on Wednesday morning.

The minister said a collaborative approach helped to clear the backlog of cargo at the border post. 

 "The BMA has embraced the need for collaboration. This was exemplified recently through the two-day strategic alignment workshop between the BMA and the South African Revenue Service, which followed the signed implementation protocol between these two organisations.

"The same goes for the way in which SAPS, SARS, the BMA, and local representatives work together to mitigate the recent challenges experienced at the Lebombo border post. I'm not sure if enough people have realised how difficult that situation was and also how well-managed it was because it could have had a far worse impact on our country. I think that again demonstrates the value of collaboration on the ground.”

Schreiber added that the work the BMA is doing is starting to be felt on the ground.

“These figures should also not make us complacent, they do not indicate to us that the job is done. Given how far we are still  from fully capacitating the BMA as it should be, these numbers actually indicate to us the enormous scale of the challenge that confronts us.

"Nonetheless, getting to this point that we mark today with this historic event was not guaranteed because any effort to integrate and standardise staff and procedures from different pre-existing departments and organisations into a new agency with one focus and one organisational culture is a daunting task."

The BMA is also “set to play a fundamental role in the digital transformation of the entire Home Affairs environment”, according to the minister.

"Tourists coming to South Africa must be able to obtain an electronic travel authorisation through an online application process that is checked when they arrive at our ports of entry and encounter those smiling BMA officials. Their biometrics must be recorded and verified against the ETA.

"For this system to supercharge tourism, the BMA must be fully integrated in its technology systems with Home Affairs and, indeed, this entire ecosystem. The same goes for the processing of other visa categories in order to attract the skills and investments South Africa desperately needs. We need to bring an end to paper-based and handwritten visas as a matter of urgency, both in order to enhance national security and to accelerate economic growth.

Meanwhile, Institute for Security Studies coordinator Willem Els says terrorist networks continue to exploit the country’s weak and under-resourced border security systems.

This as terror groups like Boko Haram, JNIM, Al-Shabaab, and ISIS-affiliated organisations are active across Africa.

"Our borders are the weak underbelly of the South African system. If we do not manage it adequately, it could become the main convert. We see that South Africa maintains quite a weak, under-resourced system,” says Els.

BMA Commissioner Mike Masiapato outlined the BMA’s critical role in tackling terrorism, human trafficking, drug smuggling and organised crime. 

"These kinds of threats, if not mitigated, have the potential to destabilise communities and harm individuals, but also have the serious potential to undermine the integrity of a nation,” he said. 

“As the Border Management Authority, we are implementing proactive as well as intelligence-led mechanisms through the National Targeting Centre, which effectively houses the multiplicity of the national intelligence structures of the country, whether it's the state Security agency, whether it's the defence intelligence, whether it is crime intelligence, as part of advancing a very collective effort, given the work that they do in the National Targeting Centre, they do that to preserve our national security imperatives.

"It is still the Department of Home Affairs whose responsibility it is to determine which nationalities from which part of the world need to come into the country with what kind of visas. Our responsibility as the port is to ensure compliance in as far as the validity of those visas, as well as the requisite travel documents."

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