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Home Affairs minister Leon Schreiber and Special Investigating Unit (SIU) head Andy Mothibi today launched the Border Management and Immigration Anti-Corruption Forum (BMIACF). “The initiative forms a key part of the intensified and coordinated effort to clamp down on corruption in this sector,” said a media advisory released by the two entities.
Attendees at today’s launch included Home Affairs minister Leon Schreiber, deputy minister Njabulo Nzuza, and director-general Tommy Makhode, Major-General David Chilembe, the acting commissioner of the Border Management Authority, national director of public prosecutions Advocate Shamila Batohi, Special Investigating Unit (SIU) head Advocate Andy Mothibi, Lieutenant-General Godfrey Lebeya who is head of the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (Hawks), representatives from other state entities, and representatives from civil society in the persons of Business Against Crime CEO Dr. Graham Wright and Corruption Watch (CW) joint interim leader Moira Campbell.
The BMIACF is the fourth such multi-stakeholder forum, following on the establishment of the Health, Local Government, and Infrastructure Built anti-corruption forums. It held its inaugural meeting in April 2024, which was attended by various government departments, civil society and professional organisations, and non-governmental entities that advocate preventing and combating corruption in society and the border management space.
The BMIACF is modelled after the Health Sector Anti-Corruption Forum, which was launched in 2019 – though its primary focus is on immigration and border management, a sector that is highly vulnerable to corruption.
“There have been reports of how the sector is infiltrated by syndicates that influence the issuing of permits and visas and influence the officials to engage in unlawful activities,” said the SIU in a statement released after that first meeting back in 2024. “The launch of this anti-corruption forum is a testament to this country’s commitment to fighting corruption and protecting the sovereignty of the country.”
CW is involved with the BMIACF as it is with the three other multi-stakeholder forums. The organisation represents civil society in evaluating and assessing corruption cases that come to the border management forum from various sources. Other civil society organisations participating are the Institute for Security Studies and OUTA.
Border corruption threatens security
“Corruption, as we all know, is an attack on the rule of law,” said Batohi. “It undermines the very foundation of our governance structures and our commitment to fairness and integrity in the critical areas of border management and immigration … It compromises security, economic stability and the safety of our citizens.”
This is particularly significant, she added, in the context of South Africa’s recent regrettable rise as an important transit route for organised crime networks involved in human trafficking, drugs and small arms smuggling, and various other forms of cross border crime. The ability to control and monitor the borders, said Batohi, is a key pillar of state security and sovereignty, and when these systems are vulnerable to corruption, the consequences are dire.
“This forum is a powerful step in fostering collaboration between the various stakeholders, including law enforcement, civil society, members of the public,” she said. “We stand ready to work with you in government, in law enforcement, and with civil society to ensure that those who exploit our immigration and border systems for personal gain are held accountable.”
Campbell agreed that demanding accountability is an essential element in fighting corruption. “Our approach of participation in multi-sectoral, multi-disciplinary forums and partnerships has always been a key component of advancing our work in holding public and private sector leaders to account for corruption and mismanagement, and in urging an intensification of anti-corruption efforts across the board.”
She noted that CW believes firmly in the holistic type of anti-corruption approach. “We were part of the launch and co-chair of the Health Sector Anti-Corruption Forum (HSACF), which was the first one launched in 2018, then subsequently the Infrastructure Built Anti-Corruption Forum in 2021, which we also co-chair, and the Local Government Anti-Corruption Forum in 2022 … The objective of these forums is to foster relationships of collaboration, consultation, mutual support, and co-operation between the parties and to seek more effective ways of addressing corruption in critical sectors.”
Corruption at the borders is a complex problem, Campbell said, involving a wide range of different actors including “customs officials, border guards, port operators, and private sector players with different levels of discretionary powers and opportunities to extract bribes. Collusion also can happen in many ways, from avoiding tariffs and taxes, coercive bribery for people to perform the most perfunctory of tasks, and of course, issuing of illegal identity, travel, and passport documents, just to name a few”.
The syndicate society
The BMIACF has its roots in the National Anti-Corruption Strategy, said Mothibi, adding that the forum’s work falls mainly under the strategy’s sixth pillar, which underscores the need to use effective risk management to protect vulnerable sectors that are most prone to corruption and unethical practices. “This includes effective corruption risk management.”
This type of multi-stakeholder forum has produced valuable benefits, Mothibi said. Referring to the HSACF, he said: “We saw during Covid how collaboration worked – during that time, the forum played a key role in risk assessments with the provision of vaccines.”
He said the SIU is currently busy with an investigation into the issuing of permanent residence permits and various types of visas, such as business, critical and exceptional skills, study, retired persons, and work visas, as well as citizenship by naturalisation. “Some of those are based on the allegations we received that there’s various acts of corruption and malpractice in those areas.”
The investigation is looking into numerous practitioners in the space, such as lawyers, accountants, and pastors – “all of those who participated in the irregularities”.
Mothibi also mentioned an investigation into the Department of Transport’s traffic register number system. This is an identification number used by foreigners and organisations that are not legal entities, for example trusts, for road traffic transactions in South Africa. “It enables you to transact with the banks, enables you to drive. and all of that. We have found that it’s beset with fraud and corruption. In fact, at last count, the team informs me that there are about 2.6-million traffic register numbers that have been issued irregularly.”
This form of large-scale corruption is often perpetrated by syndicates, said Schreiber. During the state capture years, he said, “a message cascaded throughout society that extortion, fraud and theft has just become how we do things now in South Africa – the construction mafia is one well known example of how this pattern has spread to different sectors of society. South African society today is characterised by the syndicatisation of any process where value can be extracted.”
The border management and immigration sector has not been spared, added Schreiber. “Sophisticated syndicates are organised within Home Affairs to extort and defraud both South Africans and immigrants. It’s not an individual … it is an alliance formed across people in the public sector, in the private sector, and across society that coordinate in a very sophisticated manner.”
In this environment, he said, access to services is regulated not by the institutions of the democratic state, but by those embedded syndicates that have captured not only the heights of state power, but also every level “all the way to the tender, for example, that awards mops for Eskom power plants or determines who gets an EPWP [Expanded Public Works Programme] job in the municipal ward. This is the syndicate society.”
For this reason, Schreiber said, corruption cannot be successfully tackled by treating just the symptoms – rather, a collective and wide-ranging approach is called for, one that will enforce accountability for corruption while reforming the system itself to close the loopholes that criminals and syndicates exploit.
“The Special Investigating Unit, the Department of Home Affairs, the Border Management Authority, the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, and the National Prosecuting Authority are already actively working together to enforce accountability in the border management and immigration environment.”
