During the 2024/2025 festive season, more than 38,000 Basotho nationals were intercepted by South African authorities as part of a sweeping crackdown on illegal border crossings.
The figures, released by the Border Management Authority (BMA), reveal that Lesotho nationals led the list of undocumented individuals apprehended at various ports of entry into South Africa.
BMA Commissioner Dr. Michael Masiapato shared the statistics revealing that the Basotho accounted for the largest group among the 58,394 people stopped from entering South Africa illegally.
“The leading nationality is the Lesotho nationals. And there we are talking about 38,000 of them,” Dr. Masiapato confirmed.
Minister of Home Affairs Leon Schreiber further emphasized that approximately 50,000 of those intercepted did not have the necessary documentation to enter the country.
The BMA’s festive season operations, which ran from 6 December 2024 to 18 January 2025, witnessed a dramatic rise in both legal crossings and efforts to prevent illegal entry.
The number of undocumented individuals intercepted surged from 15 924 in 2023/24 to 50 312 in 2024/25.
Following Lesotho nationals, Mozambique saw the second-highest number of interceptions at 6 549, with Zimbabweans at 3 067, Malawians at 987, and Swazis at around 870.
This follows on the hills of growing tensions between Lesotho and South Africa over a longstanding territorial dispute.
Recently, Basotho Covenant Movement (BCM) leader Dr. Ts’epo Lipholo met with officials from the United Nations (UN) and the office of former U.S. President Donald Trump to discuss South Africa’s refusal to return land captured from Lesotho, including parts of the Free State and Eastern Cape Province.Reports indicate that the UN had issued an order in the 1960s for South Africa to return this land, but the order has not been enforced.
