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JOHANNESBURG — A 3,000-mile land border running from the Atlantic seaboard to the Indian Ocean separates South Africa from five other countries, but nowhere is the traffic more intense than at Beit Bridge, the sole transit across the Limpopo River to Zimbabwe.
Despite upgrades to the immigration and customs posts in Zimbabwe and South Africa, trucks inching their way to the gates can be backed up for miles. Cargo from as far north as Zambia and Malawi heads to Durban or Cape Town, and imports go the other way.
At Christmastime, millions of migrants cross Africa’s land borders to head home, and South African roads are bustling. The city of Johannesburg alone has a gross domestic product greater than all of South Africa’s neighbors combined.
Beit Bridge hasn’t posed a problem for crossers, even those without passports. Touts known to the police and army charge $40 to $120 to exit in either direction, evading security and sharing bribes with the Department of Home Affairs, which is responsible for immigration.
Mother Nature has now thrown a kink into the familiar patterns.
Well before Christmas, the Limpopo was reduced to a series of pools and a few stretches of water because anticipated rainfall in September did not arrive. In some places, guides helped crossers avoid crocodiles sunning on the banks.
Storms in the highlands in recent weeks fed streams that merge into the river. Within a day or two, the Limpopo ripped trees from the shore and discharged three times more water than the American West’s Colorado River. Drownings were common.
Now, all must use the bridge or take a circuitous route via Botswana across the Kalahari Desert.
Since the beginning of December, when factories in Johannesburg began to close for the holidays, traffic has headed out of South Africa. In the coming weeks, the flow will reverse, and human smugglers will be busy, but a shift in the political winds in Pretoria will cause complications.
In the May elections, the African National Congress gained only 40% of the seats in Parliament. The party in power since 1994, when Nelson Mandela became the first democratically elected president, was forced to cobble together a coalition of 10 parties. That included its chief opponent, the Democratic Alliance, which is pro-business and has support among the country’s minority White population.
The DA joined the ANC in securing the tenure of President Cyril Ramaphosa, now in his second and final term under the constitution. The parties have shared Cabinet posts. Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber, a DA member of German descent who received a doctoral degree in Berlin, has promised to clean up the department.
Immigration officers speaking off the record to news media complain that Mr. Schreiber, 36, has not engaged them in plans to overhaul the system. They say the majority of staff work diligently and do not take bribes.
Fighting forgeries
South African citizens, by birth or naturalization, carry the country’s passport. Forgery of birth certificates has led Europe, Australia, Canada and the U.S. to impose a visa regime.
Citizens and permanent residents are issued documents showing their date and country of birth, which are linked to a central computer in Pretoria.
Mr. Schreiber has reportedly demanded that permanent residents leaving or returning to South Africa carry their IDs and the original documents granting their status. Even those who have lived in South Africa since the immigration boom of the 1950s and 1960s and no longer have the papers must comply.
Officers at Johannesburg airport said the new regulation was not publicly announced, leading to heated exchanges and lengthy arrival processing delays.
Repeated messages seeking clarity on the issue sent to Mr. Schreiber’s personal WhatsApp number have received no reply. His spokesman, Adrian Roos, also a DA member of parliament, declined to answer. He said he was taking time off with his family until mid-January.
Rising anger
The immigration issue is raising anger in Johannesburg, where youth unemployment is high and foreigners are blamed for taking jobs. Many find hope in the informal sector by selling fruit, mending clothes or fixing flat tires. Others go door to door in Africa’s wealthiest city, offering to paint walls or work on massive gardens in suburbs where the professional classes of all races have homes.
In the sprawling townships where artisans and casual workers can live four or five in a shack designed for one, pop-up shops known as “spazas” are standard. Cigarettes, vegetables and soft drinks are often sold through a window.
Over the past two decades, this trade has increasingly been taken over by Somalis, immigrants from Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, and Pakistanis on asylum visas. The press has been exposing the Department of Home Affairs’ “sale” of refugee status for years with little state action. A joke circulating says even a Swiss national could claim asylum.
In early December, ANC Secretary General Fikile Mbalula called for all foreigners running unlicensed spaza shops to be deported. The government has been trying to regulate the outlets across an area the size of Texas and California combined. Informal traders abound in a country with 60 million people and mass unemployment. Some lay their wares on a blanket by the roadside, others in a basket strapped to a bicycle.
Many pay no taxes, and critics say Mr. Mbalula’s comments merely add to xenophobia, which in the past has led to campaigns of violence against foreigners. He has since suggested that running unauthorized retail shops be reserved for South African citizens.
Riots in Mozambique after the October elections have exacerbated the flow of workers back into the country. Thousands have fled to neighboring states. In December, South Africa temporarily closed its main entry point to Mozambique.
While businesses reopen and workers return from across Africa in the coming weeks, a vast humanity will head south through a land border equivalent to the distance between New York City and San Diego.
What awaits them is hard to predict. Critics fear Mr. Schreiber’s determined efforts to tighten entry processes could fan the growing disquiet about foreign workers and the steep levels of unemployment in South Africa.
Ryson Mokwena runs a minibus taxi between Johannesburg and Zimbabwe’s southern city of Bulawayo. He said he never carries illegals on their own. “I bring between 12 and 15 people at a time across Beit Bridge, and at most I will take three who have no papers.”
He said the traffic pattern hadn’t changed in years. “Those without documents pay double the fare, sometimes more. It is good business.”
Mr. Mokwena explained that not all illegals lack passports.
“I have passengers who entered South Africa in January 2024 with a visa allowing a stay of six weeks, but they worked until Christmas, and when they left, no one said anything. Now they are coming back in, and officers can see by the passport they overstayed, but a few dollars, and they’re through. Year after year.”
He said the Limpopo flood made his work easier. “For those crossing by foot, I drive them from Bulawayo to the bridge and take their luggage over while they do the river. I can wait hours for them on the South African side while my other clients moan about the delay. Now, when the water is high, they pay a bribe and we all leave at the same time.”
Mr. Mokwena said tighter regulations increased the money made by the trade, including guides, officials, food sellers, smugglers and specialists who know how to cross with children. “And I can charge more too,” he said.
At 43, he has been running the service for 18 years. “I am in and out of Zimbabwe all the time,” he said. “The place barely functions, and life is terrible. Fix that problem, and people will stop coming to South Africa. Now we are watching the rise of a civil war in Mozambique, and the world is doing nothing, but they will howl when it’s too late and thousands are on the move.
“The police, army and Home Affairs make money out of this. Don’t blame me. I’m just a driver.”
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