Festive travel turned chaotic at the Lebombo border post this Christmas, as more than 50 000 people crossed between South Africa and Mozambique in just two days.

This triggered kilometre-long queues and hours of delays for holidaymakers and freight carriers.

Images from the scene showed masses of foot and road traffic competing for space at one of the country’s busiest land borders.

The Border Management Authority (BMA) says the surge reflects a return to pre-Covid travel volumes, combined with severe staffing and infrastructure constraints.

According to the BMA, Lebombo – along with Beitbridge – has been under intense pressure as festive season traffic has peaked.

BMA Commissioner Mike Masiapato admitted that the authority is operating at just 25% of its intended capacity, with only 2 600 officers in place instead of the planned 11 000.

“That reality is not just a national posture, it’s what we are experiencing on the ground,” Masiapato told EWN.

He added that immigration officers were bearing the brunt of the pressure as thousands of travellers needed to be processed in short timeframes.

The situation worsened on Christmas Day, when overwhelmed systems forced South African and Mozambican authorities to revert to manual processing at Lebombo.

According to IOL, the BMA confirmed that more than 30 000 travellers were processed at Lebombo in just 24 hours – a new record for a land port of entry.

Manual processing at Lebombo raises security concerns

As travel volumes began to overwhel border systems, a decision to revert to manual processing was reached in consultation with Home Affairs Deputy Minister Njabulo Nzuza and senior officials.

Manual processing is said to pose a major security risk, as it bypasses the electronic system that automatically flags wanted criminals linked to databases such as SAPS and Interpol, potentially allowing suspects to pass through undetected.

“Because of the queues, we are completely struggling to clear everybody,” Masiapato added.

“We have just decided that we are going to do an additional manual processing of all of the travellers here… meaning that we are not going to be using the system.”

Under the temporary arrangement, officials manually stamped passports and captured travellers’ details on cellphones, with the information to be uploaded later for record-keeping. The electronic system remained in use for travellers of other nationalities, but not for South Africans and Mozambicans during the peak period.

Masiapato warned that if wanted individuals were later identified as having crossed during the system outage, law enforcement agencies would have to track them down.