As festive travel peaked around Christmas Day, the Border Management Authority (BMA) reported that it intercepted approximately 500 Zimbabwean nationals attempting to leave South Africa illegally while transiting through Botswana.<\/p>\n
BMA Commissioner Dr Michael Masiapato told SABC News that the Zimbabwean nationals were intercepted while trying to exit the country unlawfully via the Groblersbrug border post.<\/p>\n
Masiapato said that despite a massive influx at the Lebombo port of entry with Mozambique \u2014 where about 30,000 people crossed on Christmas Eve<\/a> \u2014 traffic was noticeably lower at the Beitbridge border post with Zimbabwe, where approximately 16,000 people were processed.<\/p>\n \u201cAt Beitbridge, when we did 30,000 at Lebombo, they did only around 16,000. You can see that we actually doubled their number,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He attributed the decrease at Beitbridge to intensified measures along South Africa\u2019s northern border, particularly to curb illegal migration.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you look at the kind of measures that we put around our northern border around Beitbridge itself, particularly around illegal migration, we have started seeing the people having drifted into our western border with Botswana,\u201d Masiapato said.<\/p>\n \u201cFor instance, just in the past two days, we have been able to intercept over 500 Zimbabweans that were trying to cross into Botswana around Groblers\u2019 Bridge port of entry illegally. All of those people were intercepted and we had to make sure that we bring them back to the port and we process them out for deportation.\u201d<\/p>\n Masiapato said there has been a shift from Beitbridge to Groblers\u2019 Bridge and other border points into Botswana, which he described as an attempt to bypass border control processes.<\/p>\n \u201cSo there is a shift out of Beitbridge into Groblers\u2019 Bridge and other ports into Botswana and that is an attempt to at least subvert the processes. So we are aware of that and that is why we proactively deployed even that side to be able to deal with that situation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n [email\u00a0protected]<\/a><\/p>\n IOL News\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Get your news on the go. Download the latest IOL App for\u00a0Android<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0IOS<\/a>\u00a0now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As festive travel peaked around Christmas Day, the Border Management Authority (BMA) reported that it intercepted approximately 500…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7391,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[1695,2780,5181,5180,4286,5337,5339,5340,5226,1696,5336,5182,123,5338,131,5335],"class_list":{"0":"post-7593","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-south-africa","8":"tag-android","9":"tag-beitbridge","10":"tag-bma","11":"tag-border-management-authority","12":"tag-botswana","13":"tag-christmas-eve","14":"tag-groblers","15":"tag-groblers-bridge","16":"tag-groblersbrug","17":"tag-ios","18":"tag-lebombo","19":"tag-michael-masiapato","20":"tag-mozambique","21":"tag-sabc-news","22":"tag-south-africa","23":"tag-zimbabweans"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}