South African security agents team up to net border jumpers

The South African government has launched what it calls Operation Pyramid that will see the army, police and immigration department forming a single border management agency to ensure no illegal immigrants or goods enter the country’s borders.

According to the Department of Home Affairs, Operation Pyramid seeks to better co-ordinate and align government border projects, programmes and interventions. It is also one of the processes leading up to the establishment of the Border Management Agency (BMA) in 2017.

The SANDF is tasked with border protection along South Africa’s landward borders under Operation Corona. There are currently 13 companies deployed along South Africa’s borders with Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland and Zimbabwe and a further two companies will be ordered to the same tasking in the current financial year.

In addition to patrolling long stretches of land where roads are virtually non–existent and border fences, in many instances, have been pulled down to facilitate cross-border movement, soldiers on border protection duty in the Kruger National Park also assist rangers in anti-rhino poaching operations.

Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba said its intention was to address steps being taken to “better secure national borders and the integrity of our national territory”.

“By so doing, we are not negating the wishes or dreams of the African Union, but are taking cognizance of the fact that before we can have free movement and remove colonial borders, we will need a gradual approach towards managing migration that takes account of the fact that African countries have different levels of attractiveness.

“Our migration policies, legislation, regulations and systems are unevenly developed and we need a risk-based approach to migration management.”

According to Gigaba, Operation Pyramid will focus on law enforcement; technology solutions; infrastructure improvement; border community development, bi- and multilateral, as well as intelligence driven operations.

First order of business for Operation Pyramid is now the roll-out of its various components to targeted and pilot areas in what the Minister termed “the borderline environment”.