South Africa's new Border Management Authority has been deployed to help prevent people and goods from entering the country illegally. But not everybody is convinced that the agency will succeed.
South Africa launched its new Border Management Authority (BMA) on Thursday to strengthen the country's border control and prevent the illegal entry of people and goods into the country.
The migration route from the Horn of Africa to South Africa is popular one, with porous borders along the way that have become transit hubs for undocumented migrants.
Ethnic tensions, political persecution and environmental disasters are key factors forcing millions to flee their homes in recent years, according to data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Most African migrants who make it to South Africa have faced threats of xenophobic violence from locals who accuse them of stealing their jobs and causing crime.
Destination South Africa
The South African government said that its new border agency was not designed to shut out African migrants -- but rather to protect its borders.
"Every country I know in the world is interested to know what is going on at their borders, what is coming in and what is going out," South African Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi told DW.
"So, we are not about to apologize to anybody for deploying border guards to do what other nations of the world are doing."
Dr. Mike Masiapata, the BMA's commissioner, told DW that the new agency is well cut out for its mandates.
"Our responsibility is to facilitate and manage the legitimate movement of persons at the ports of entry as well as at the border enforcement area," Masiapata said. "We have to facilitate the movement of trade across our ports of entry as well as the border enforcement area."
Masiapata explained the roles of the various enforcement agencies that operate at the border.
"The responsibility of the defense force is to ensure border protection. They have to ensure border safeguarding but at the same time they have the responsibility of protecting the country's territorial integrity," he said, adding that the police also play an imporatnt function.
"It's about crime prevention, it's about crime combating and it's about doing broader crime prevention," Masiapata said.
"When you look at the border management service you will realize that members of the police service have been deployed at the port environment to do what we call border access control so that responsibility as per the border management act belongs to the members or officers of the Border Management Authority."
But not everybody is convinced that the new agency will succeed.
Freeman Bhengu, a member of the Sisonke Peoples Forum, a grassroots organization that works to make South Africa a better country, doesn't expect success from the new border authority in dealing with South Africa's current immigration crisis.
"They are short on budget, they are corrupt, and they are incompetent," Bhengu told DW. "We don't see anything good coming out of them. They need to be disbanded and we feel soldiers need to be deployed to all our borders."
What are the real solutions to the migrant influx?
Ngqabutho Mabhena, who chairs the Zimbabwe Community in South Africa, welcomed the new border authority. But he told DW that the BMA it is not the solution to Africa's illegal immigration challenges.
"As long as the economies of the region are not developed at least to the level of the South African economy, we are going to continue to have these challenges where migrants from neighbouring countries want to go to South Africa for greener pastures," Mabhena said.
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And Darren Olivier, director of the African Defence Review, an independent media organization focused on African conflict and defense, agreed that tackling illegal migration goes beyond border control measures.
"It is an impossible task unless you solve problems that force people to want to leave their countries, things like economic collapses, conflicts and all sorts of issues," Olivier said. "To an extent there is a limit to what is possible through intelligence or through patrolling. The only answer to this is to improve conditions in the countries north of us."
South African authorities said that since the establishment of the new agency, 139 stolen vehicles have been intercepted and 35,000 people have been prevented from entering South Africa illegally.
Isaac Kaledzi contributed reporting to this article, which was adapted from a radio report broadcast on DW's daily radio show AfricaLink
