December 2023 was no different from other months for soldiers deployed on the standing SA National Defence Force (SANDF) border protection tasking – Operation Corona – with 1 383 “undocumented persons” stopped and handed to police and Department of Home Affairs (DHA) immigration officers.
Soldiers patrolling the 233 km land border with Zimbabwe accosted 794 illegals in the 31 days of December. This is 139 more than the 555 Basotho whose unlawful entry into South Africa in December was cut short by soldiers posted on both the Free State and Eastern Cape borders with the landlocked mountain kingdom.
Other land borders where soldiers prevented illegal entry to South Africa in December were with North West/Botswana (23), KwaZulu-Natal/Mozambique/Eswatini (eight) and Mpumalanga/Mozambique (three).
In November 2023, reserve and regular force soldiers stopped 607 illegal immigrants, with Basotho topping the numbers list with 297 – 50 more than the Zimbabweans attempting illegal entry to South Africa that month.
Contraband, not detailed by the Joint Operations Division of the SANDF – but usually including cigarettes, liquor, pharmaceuticals, knock-off clothing and footwear – worth more than R16 million was taken from smugglers along six national borders in December.
Main offenders were Batswana, who lost R5 094 000 and R16 000 worth of narcotics to eagle-eyed soldiers. Number two on the smugglers’ list were Zimbabweans attempting to bring R4.8 million worth of contraband into South Africa followed by Mozambicans carrying R4.09 million in illegal goods. Additionally, soldiers confiscated R965 417 worth of narcotics from residents of Zimbabwe. The Limpopo/Zimbabwe border further yielded firearms valued at R20 488.
An unspecified number of vehicles, with an estimated total value of R334 950, were prevented from illegally exiting South Africa via the Botswana and Zimbabwe land borders.
