South African government officials are seriously considering deploying drones at its “porous” borders to improve national security and prevent noncitizens from entering illegally.
“We have reached a point where we believe we should not be moaning about the number of companies [military units], the numbers of warm bodies, you have on the borderline,” South African defense minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula said during a press conference Sunday, according to a local report.
“We should now … look at innovative ways, look at technology. For instance, [South Africa] is a big producer of unmanned aerial vehicles and we are now looking into that,” she said. “We think that through this, we will be able to win the war against illegal migration; we will be able to win the war against porous borders.”
The South African government has not publicly released additional information on its drone strategy and how it would use the new technology to identify people trying to cross into the country illegally or respond to incidents.
South Africa shares more than 3,000 miles of land border with Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, and Zimbabwe. The country does not have a “wall” or barrier along its borders with those half-dozen countries to its north.
“We have a border with no fence that anyone can just walk across. An unknown number of mostly unskilled and undocumented immigrants are entering the country and are employed in labor-intensive industries across the country,” Haniff Hoosen, the shadow home affairs minister from the opposition Democratic Alliance party, said last year.
South Africa’s general elections are scheduled for May.
