Cape Town Airport’s big bet

In response to tedious waiting times and long queues for border control at Cape Town International Airport, the Western Cape government has almost doubled the airport’s border control staff, while plans to automate border gates go unfulfilled. 

Cape Town International Airport recently hired an additional 48 assistant port control officers to speed up immigration processes and reduce queuing.

The initiative was launched on 18 August by Western Cape Premier Alan Winde, Home Affairs Minister Leon Schrieber, and Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis. 

A statement released by the Democratic Alliance explains that increasing the number of border control staff from 66 to 114 people would reduce waiting times at the airport.

This is “where issues of slow border processing have been affecting tourist and business travel experiences for too long,” it said.

The new staff members were seconded by the City and the Western Cape Government in partnership with the Border Management Authority. 

Spokesperson for the Western Cape Premier, Regan Thaw, told Newsday that Winde has been speaking about resolving the problem of long waiting times at Cape Town Airport for quite some time.

The Western Cape Government provided 24 its own interns as part of this staff increase. Speaking at the launch, Winde said this is in line with the Western Cape Government’s plans to grow tourist arrivals through initiatives such as the Air Access programme. 

The Air Access programme, launched in 2016, aims to encourage more airlines to fly directly to South Africa.

Cape Town as a tourist destination is performing well, according to the DA, which said the city was back at, or exceeding, pre-pandemic levels. 

While tourist arrivals and flights increase, the Western Cape Government and the City of Cape Town stepped in to intervene in the issue of long waiting times at the airport, as the BMA was not able to address it themselves. 

Due to a budget shortfall of R4.3 billion, the BMA was not in the financial position to take appropriate action.

In fact, the authority is already struggling to pay its current expenses. The Portfolio Committee on Home Affairs brought the underfunding of the authority to the attention of parliament in July 2025.

The committee said it was concerned that the BMA was severely under-resourced in terms of technology and operational tools as well as staff. 

For the 2024/25 financial year, the BMA had received R1.34 billion from the National Treasury, mainly for salaries, despite requesting R2.9 billion.

South African airports lag behind on border tech

While Cape Town airport doubles its capacity of border management officials, the rest of the world is slowly doing away with border management staff and implementing automated border systems.

Automated border gates, or e-gates, automatically read passports and allow for quicker border processing with fewer human errors.

The new staff complement appears to be a move away from the Border Management Authority’s goal of installing automated entry-and-exit systems at all 71 of South Africa’s land, air, and sea border crossings by 2025. 

When questioned about the Department’s decision to intervene by adding additional staff and the lack of new technology to handle the increase in passengers, spokesperson to the Minister of Home Affairs, Duwayne Esau, told Newsday that this is an interim measure. 

“This addresses the immediate need for more efficient immigration processes during the upcoming peak tourism season,” he said. “We continue to work towards digitising and automating entry and exit procedures.” 

Esau added that the Department of Home Affairs will be moving forward with its plans to roll out phase one of the Electronic Travel Authorisation in the coming weeks, a step in the direction of automating the entry process. 

This authorisation will digitise the South African visa application process for visiting tourists who require visas.

Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) had previously planned to phase in automated entry and exit procedures from 2024, starting with OR Tambo International Airport.

However, these plans were stalled when the state-owned entity terminated its contract with French biometrics company IDEMIA last year due to irregularities in the tender process.

The French company’s local BEE partner, InfoVerge, claimed it was sidelined in the R115 million project and took ACSA to court over the procurement process. 

IDEMIA has provided automated entry-exit systems in Australia, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates.

ACSA’s Chief Information Officer was suspended due to allegations of wrongdoing in the procurement process following an investigation. 

“ACSA is currently considering options in relation to the contract for the provision of the Automated Border Control project,” the entity said last year, following the termination.

Since then, ACSA has not announced any new contracts, and the project remains stalled. A tender for automating border control systems at Cape Town airport was first announced in January 2020. 

Responding to the additional staff and future plans for border control technology, ACSA told Newsday that border processing is the mandate of the BMA, not ACSA.

However, the entity added that Cape Town International Airport is piloting automated border control gates, but that “this technology will complement the work of officials at the counters, rather than replace them.”