Pretoria – The Border Management Authority has moved to tighten border controls by utilizing drones and introducing new safety stamps.
Speaking at a media briefing on Sunday, 3 August 2025, Commissioner of the Border Management Authority (BMA), Dr. Michael Masiapato, mentioned that previously few months, widespread use of fraudulent immigration stamps had been uncovered.
At least 14 passports bearing fraudulent immigration stamps had been recognized and confiscated.
To counter such crime, Dr. Masiapato mentioned new safety measures had been going to be applied throughout ports of entry to enhance traveller verification means and environment friendly regulation enforcement operations.
Dr. Masiapato mentioned on Friday, 1 August 2025, new BMA immigration safety stamps had been launched to exchange the previous ones.
“This initiative forms part of the BMA’s broader commitment to strengthening national security and represents a deliberate step towards enhancing the integrity of border control processes,” mentioned Dr. Masiapato.
“In this regard, we collaborated with Government Printing Works and designed the brand new stamps with the best safety requirements together with the BMA emblem to stop tampering, forgery and unauthorised use.
“Before the introduction of the new stamps, all key stakeholder across the criminal justice system and the border management ecosystem were consulted and engaged on the matter.”
Dr. Masiapato mentioned the withdrawal of the previous stamps was carried out concurrently with the distribution of the brand new ones.
“Each of the immigration officers have been allocated a specific stamp with its unique number linked to each officer in order to trace back should their allocated stamp be found to facilitate illegal migration into the country,” Dr. Masiapato mentioned.
“Whilst we began with immigration-based stamps, we are actually embarking on redesigning new stamps for different specialised features equivalent to agriculture, well being, and surroundings.
“As the BMA, we would like to indicate that it is the responsibility of the traveller to ensure that their passports are correctly and lawfully processed at official ports of entry to avoid being refused entry or deported, declared inadmissible or even arrested.”
Dr. Masiapato mentioned 9 954 individuals had been intercepted, apprehended, and deported as they had been trying to enter South Africa illegally.
Of these, 5 826 had been undocumented, 2 127 had been inadmissible and a pair of 001 had been undesirables.
He mentioned nearly all of the intercepted and deported people had been Basotho, Zimbabweans, and Mozambicans.
In the primary quarter of the 12 months, Border Guards intercepted about 496 622 individuals who tried to enter South Africa illegally.
The use of drone expertise has enhanced the BMA’s means to identify border jumpers.
“As we continue to strengthen our border security efforts by leveraging technology-driven solutions such as the usage of drones for border surveillance, during April 2025, we sent eight of our Border Guards for pilot training,” Dr. Masiapato mentioned.
“Today, we’re proud to announce that six (6) of our Border Guards graduated and certified as drone pilots on the 14th of July 2025.
“In the past, we were being assisted by the drone pilots from the Department of Agriculture in operating our drones at our various Ports.”
Dr. Masiapato mentioned the BMA plans to ship extra border guards for drone pilot coaching.
The drone pilot coaching was in step with strikes to modernise border regulation enforcement and enhance detection of quite a lot of cross-border crimes, together with unlawful migration, trafficking, items, and human smuggling, amongst others.
“The expertise they’ve acquired will strengthen border safety efforts by way of enhanced surveillance and elevated visibility, significantly within the recognized susceptible segments of the borderline.
“Further, we have also partnered with the South African Reserve Bank and trained the border guards on counterfeit detection and currency handling, and this gave them the necessary skills to identify counterfeit banknotes and coins in circulation,” mentioned Dr. Masiapato.
“In closing, the BMA acknowledges that extra must be finished as different dangers proceed to emerge.
“As such, we proceed to implement strong contingency plans and emergency response protocols at our ports to deal with any incidents that will come up.
“The BMA remains dedicated to upholding the integrity of our borders.”
