Thupeyo Muleya, Beitbridge Bureau
South Africa’s Border Management Authority (BMA) will this weekend launch a new high-tech Vehicle Targeting System (VTS) to curb the growing scourge of cross-border vehicle theft and smuggling that is affecting South Africa and neighbouring countries.
In a statement on Monday, the BMA said its Commissioner, Dr Michael Masiapato, launched the system at the border with Mozambique, at Lebombo Port of Entry in the Komatipoort area on Sunday morning.
It said the system is a joint initiative of the BMA and the International Vehicle Identification Desk.
“In light of vehicle theft and cross-border vehicle smuggling, the objective of the VTS is to replace indiscriminate manual inspection of vehicles with intelligence-led selection to enable officers to intervene where data points to, rather than at random,” said the BMA.
“As part of its digital transformation journey, the BMA is moving away from mundane, inefficient and repetitive random checks to intelligence-led and technology-driven targeted interceptions to enhance national security and combat cross-border vehicle smuggling.”
This comes against a backdrop of sophisticated vehicle theft syndicates operating across the region.
Police investigations have shown that multinational networks are involved in cross-border car theft syndicates, with stolen vehicles leaving South Africa through many land borders to Lesotho, Botswana, Mozambique and Malawi, at times via illegal crossing points.
In some cases, locals in South Africa are also involved through insurance fraud, where they sell the car and claim insurance after reporting it as stolen.
It is understood that in most cases, the cars are driven by locals to crossing points where they are handed over to other nationals for onward movement.
Lebombo, which borders Mozambique, is one of the key ports identified as a hotspot for such smuggling activities, along with other ports bordering Botswana, Lesotho and Zimbabwe.
