Five uncoordinated organs of state are currently involved in managing the country’s borders, resulting in a large influx of undocumented foreigners and contraband goods, Parliament’s home affairs committee heard on Tuesday.

Just under 9 000 employees were involved in border management and the various players focused on their own mandates at the expense of border security, Home Affairs Director General Mkuseli Apleni said.

He was making a presentation to MPs on the draft Border Management Authority (BMA) Bill, which would see a single border authority set up at South Africa‘s ports of entry.

President Jacob Zuma referred to efforts to establish a new border control authority in his State Of the Nation Address in 2009. In June 2013, Cabinet approached Parliament to draft legislation.

Apleni said South Africa received among the highest number of asylum seekers in Africa and the country’s border management was vulnerable. Border security globally had been increased and it was not an issue unique to South Africa.

Over 39-million people moved through South Africa‘s borders annually. The country’s borders stretch for 4 471 km, including the landlocked border with Lesotho, and have 72ports of entry.

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The fallout continues over a move by Kenya’s Nongovernmental Board to address the wage disparity between local and foreign workers, with some suggesting that the motives have more to do with silencing government critics than wage fairness. But the issue of wages has taken hold with locals, creating a complex situation.

In June the NGO Board, a government institution that is responsible for regulating the NGO sector in Kenya, accused NGOs of hiring expats over locals, and of paying them salaries up to four times higher than those paid to their local counterparts. The Board, headed by Fazul Mahammed, has threatened to revoke the licenses of NGOs who do not reduce the wage disparity between local and foreign employees and who do not hire and train more local staff.

One group speaking out against the decision, the Civil Society Reference Group, an umbrella network of more than 150 local, national and international nongovernmental groups, issued a statement saying that “Kenya is likely to lose a huge chunk of the over Kshs 400 billion that NGOs bring into the economy annually if the poorly thought out, ill-advised and misguided circular issued by the NGO Coordination Bureau on employment of expatriates working with NGOs in Kenya is implemented.”

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