OR Tambo International Airport handled the highest number of travellers — 1,065,636 — during the festive season.
This was followed by Beitbridge land port of entry to Zimbabwe (645,590 travellers) and Lebombo land port of entry to Mozambique (571,131).
According to the Border Management Authority (BMA), Lebombo handled 183,935 fewer travellers than during the 2023/24 festive period.
BMA Commissioner Dr Michael Masiapato said this could be ascribed to the protests in Mozambique which had disrupted the movement of both people and goods along the Maputo corridor.
“As such, Kosi Bay port of entry to Mozambique through KwaZulu-Natal saw a significant increase of traveller volumes to about 63,326 compared to 41,079 for the 2023/2024 festive period. This was due to several travellers avoiding using Lebombo for entering Mozambique,” he said.
Providing an update on the impact of festive season operations on Friday, Masiapato and home affairs minister Leon Schreiber said the BMA had facilitated the “legitimate movement” of about 5,084,251 travellers at South Africa’s 71 ports of entry during the festive season.
The number represents an increase of 51,680 travellers compared to the 2023/2024 festive period. However, Masiapato said this number is still less than the pre-Covid-19 number of about 6-million travellers.
He said during the period, the top 10 ports of entry which facilitated the majority of travellers were OR Tambo International Airport, Beitbridge, Lebombo, Kopfontein, Oshoek, Cape Town International Airport, Maseru Bridge, Ficksburg, Cape Town Harbour and Durban Harbour.
The ports facilitated about 3,964,122 travellers, while the remaining 33% were facilitated by the 61 other ports of entry across the country.
“In facilitating the movement of these travellers, we processed over 395,189 private vehicles, 12,974 minibus taxis and 6,071 buses through our movement control system. Further, we processed over 9,491 aircraft through our international airports and about 660 vessels across at our seaports. In addition, about 226 vessels were processed for crew changes through the off-port limit mechanism in our maritime environment (which means crew changes without a vessel docking at port),” Masiapato said.
Out of the total number of 58,938 trucks processed, 47,891 were processed for exports while 11,047 were processed for imports.
Masiapato said of those processed for export, 74% were processed and cleared within 30 minutes while 66% of those processed for imports were also cleared within 30 minutes.
He said Lebombo facilitated the majority of export trucks totalling 18,544 while Beitbridge recorded the highest number of import trucks at totalling 5,521.
Masiapato said the authority’s biosecurity experts managed to intercept and seize a number of unauthorised consignments of infested beans and wheat, nuts, termites, infested rice, spirogyra algae, soil samples, herbs, unvaccinated poultry, dairy products and tortoises.
Schreiber said the number of attempted illegal border crossings by undocumented people that were successfully prevented increased by 215% over the festive season.
“In 2023/24, 15,924 undocumented people who tried to come into our country illegally were intercepted. In 2024/2025, this number increased to 50,312. Another 6,159 people were detected for overstaying and a further 1,923 were refused entry due to fraudulent documentation or noncompliance with entry requirements,” he said.
TimesLIVE
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