Imagine a young Venda man living a hundred kilometres downstream of Beitbridge town. They spy a beautiful girl they fancy on the other side of the Limpopo river. Does anyone in their right mind seriously think the young man will travel a hundred kilometres to Beitbridge border post to have a passport stamped so that he can go and propose to a girl who lives a few kilometres across the river?
And if officials happen to meet the young man, how do they know on which side of the river he belongs. They speak exactly the same Venda on both sides of the river.
Colonial borders are artificial and arbitrary lines drawn right down the middle of existing communities in ALL cases.
Therefore for anyone to demand that a border must not be porous is daydreaming of the highest order. It is also a sign that the person has not travel and has no clue how borders function.
At the border border between Zambia and Tanzania it is difficult to tell which street or footpath is in Nakonde the Zambian town, and which one is in Tunduma the Tanzanian town. You can be living in Nakonde and go fetch water in Tunduma and vice versa.
In Dedza the border between Malawi and Mozambique is a nondescript building surrounded by open plains. People and livestock wonder across the plains freely. In Ntcheu district of Malawi the main road from Blantyre to Lilongwe is said to straddle the border for several kilometres. People from Mozambique use clinics and schools in Malawi and vice versa.
Where my wife comes from in Honde Valley the local chief used to rule cases from both sides of the border. People's movement was only curtailed when the border was mined during Zimbabwe's liberation war. All along the Zambezi river the Tonga people fish using canoes and build their homes on either side of the river as they choose. No person in their right mind can try and allocate a Tonga person to Zambia or Zimbabwe.
At Kasumbalesa the border post between Zambia and the DRC is a collection of nondescript buildings surrounded by thick bush. If you take a footbath a few hundred metres long you won't know on which side of the border you will be.
The bottom line is border controls have never really worked as a way of controlling immigration. It is unlikely they will work. If people have a motive, they will find a way across. Palestinians dig tunnels across the border despite it being patrolled by two of the Middle East's biggest armies, one of them inhumanly ruthless.
No country in the world has ever successfully sealed its borders against human movement. There is a much better chance of finding ice-cream in hell, than that of South Africa being the first to succeed. Not with borders drawn right down the middle of Sotho, Swazi, Tsonga, Venda, Tswana and Nama peoples. These peoples are quite capable of choosing which set of documents they want and when.
No one should make noises about 'the border tribes' allowing in foreigners. Over seventy percent of the people I met in Johannesburg who introduced themselves as Zulus, latter explained that they are actually Swazis. That is how I came to know that there are people called Jo'burg Zulus. These are people who speak one of the Nguni dialects and pass themselves off as Zulus because the Euro-Africans from whom they would be looking for work express preference for Zulus but have no clue about the different Nguni dialects.
The problem for South Africa is not the mere presence of foreigners. The major problem is South Africans are often out-competed by foreigners in nearly all spheres of endeavour. This goes against their notion that they are 'better' than other Africans.
That is why most of the xenophobic sentiments are targeted at people who are running small businesses or holding onto jobs more successfully than locals.
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