28 Malawi internationals found crammed into a small bakkie

By Tando Mfengwana
09 October 2006

Last Thursday night, 28 illegal immigrants crammed into a back of bakkie were seized a short distance from Johannesburg.

The Star reports that they had been smuggled into the country by a driver, a Malawian who was driving a bakkie with a Gauteng registration number.

He said to have told traffic officers that he was trying to help the people who come into the country poor to look for jobs and to find their relatives.

The group was held overnight at the Mantsole traffic control centre in Hammanskraal near the N1 highway, where they were said to have been stopped for a routine check.

The report says that Nathal Ntuli, a technician for a company that operates the control centre’s infrastructure, said that the bakkie is so small that only a few people could normally fit into the back.
He said that many of the passengers did not have passports.

The centre’s commander, Johan Dreyer is said to have said that South African drivers were making fortunes in the process of bringing Malawians into the country daily.

Dreyer said that another problem was that of overloading.