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NewsDay

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SA moves to end Beitbridge chaos

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JOHANNESBURG — South Africa has agreed to send more immigration officers to Beitbridge to speed up the clearance of travellers and cargo.

JOHANNESBURG — South Africa has agreed to send more immigration officers to Beitbridge to speed up the clearance of travellers and cargo. Report by Eyewitness/BDLive

It also says it wants to build additional roads for heavy vehicles at the country’s border with Zimbabwe.

Since last weekend, Beitbridge has been overwhelmed by tens of thousands of travellers trying to get back to South Africa after the Christmas holidays.

Officials said the border post experienced an average of about 26 000 people passing through the port of entry daily in the past few days.

Home Affairs minister Naledi Pandor said South Africa did not anticipate the huge volume of traffic this year.

Her Zimbabwean counterpart, Kembo Mohadi, held discussions with her on Monday to discuss what he called the “terrible” situation at Beitbridge.

Pandor has promised to deploy more immigration staff to Beitbridge with immediate effect.

Extra clearance points will be set up outside the buildings to try to ease the massive backlog.

A team of reporters from Zimbabwe’s State media said they were briefly detained by South African police yesterday while trying to cover the chaos at the border.

Officials in Zimbabwe have blamed South Africa’s immigration officials for taking a casual approach despite the surge in traffic.

But Lunga Ngqengelele, a spokesperson for Home Affairs minister, denied there was a “casual approach”, but confirmed there were problems at the border post.

“There is no dispute regarding the challenges at Beitbridge. We are aware of it and the department is working to improve the situation. This is not a problem with staff, but (with) the volumes passing through the border post,” he said.

Last year the department won a court case after it was challenged over the use of soldiers at OR Tambo International Airport.

Contributing to debate on the chaos in Beitbridge on Facebook, Education, Sport, Arts and Culture minister David Coltart called for a new border between Zimbabwe and South Africa.

In his post, Coltart said: “We have to move from talk to urgent action . . . this situation needs a massive, urgent effort by both the South African and Zimbabwean governments.

“If need be, we should be considering the construction of another road to South Africa — for example, the most direct . . . route is south through Kezi . . . that road needs to be upgraded and a new border constructed over the Shashi and a road constructed through Botswana direct to, say, Martin’s Drift.”

However, the South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry said opening a new border, though a good idea, would not solve the current problems.

Chamber CEO Neren Rau said the idea should be “how to improve road efficiencies that would promote trade and movement of people”.

Long queues of vehicles stretched as far as 20km into Zimbabwe on the main highway to the Beitbridge border post, one of the busiest in Southern Africa.