Soldiers doing the hard yards on largely inhospitable border territory with Mozambique and Zimbabwe prevented 1 675 people from illegally entering South Africa in December.
This is 1 370 more than were intercepted by soldiers deployed on the border protection tasking Operation Corona in November last year along the same national land borders.
All told the December “haul” of illegal immigrants handed to Department of Home Affairs (DHA) immigration officials and the SA Police Service (SAPS) in December totalled 1 850. A hundred and thirty-eight Basuto illegals were stopped on the Eastern Cape and Free State borders with landlocked Lesotho. With the exception of a lone Namibian, small numbers of illegals from Mozambique, Eswatini (36 stopped along the KwaZulu-Natal borders with both neighbouring countries) and 10 from Botswana found their plans to be in South Africa stymied by men and women wearing camouflage.
In total, soldiers confiscated narcotics and contraband worth over R9.3 million from smugglers/traffickers operating on the Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Mozambique and Zimbabwe borders. Narcotics, types not specified, totalled R3.8 million with contraband, again types not specified but normally, cigarettes, liquor, clothing, footwear and pharmaceuticals, valued at R5.6 million, were confiscated and handed to the appropriate authorities for disposal.
Soldiers deployed on the Free State border with Lesotho rounded up unspecified livestock said to be worth R1.3 million illegally on South African pastureland.
While not a new addition to the Joint Operations listing of illegal border activities, December’s statistics add, for the first time, a value to some of the reported criminal arrests. This sees the five arrests on the Limpopo/Zimbabwe border given as “contravening of the law valued at R154 200”. The Eastern Cape/Lesotho border was the site of another criminal arrest with Joint Operations stating “two criminal arrested and stolen apprehended valued at R179 000 (sic)”. In total, 19 criminals were apprehended by soldiers in December.
Soldiers also prevented an unknown number of presumably stolen vehicles said to be valued at R7.4 million in total from exiting South Africa at its borders with Eswatini, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
