Undocumented foreigners, crime, and tourism challenges flagged in Mpumalanga

Tourism stakeholders have called for stronger migration enforcement in Mpumalanga, warning that undocumented foreign nationals can make it harder to trace suspects involved in crimes affecting the province’s tourism sector.

Speaking to the media at the Mpumalanga Tourism Expo on Friday, Southern Africa Tourism Services Association (Satsa) national chairperson and Graskop Gorge Lift Company co-founder and director Oupa Pilane said the province needed to address governance, safety, and migration challenges to unlock tourism’s economic potential.

Undocumented migrants and crime

Pilane told* The Citizen* that communities along the South Africa-Mozambique border had historically moved between the two countries because families had been divided by colonial-era borders.

However, he said that challenges arise when authorities needed to enforce the law.

“Let’s manage migration. Let’s enforce the laws of migration, and let people, as they come into the province, or as they go out of the province, can they be legally in those areas?” Pilane said.

He cited the killing of two tourists in the Kruger National Park as an example of the challenges facing law enforcement.

Pilane said fingerprints had initially been found at the scene, but suspects could not immediately be traced. He commended the South African Police Service (Saps) for later apprehending two Mozambican suspects, with one also found in Zimbabwe.

However, he cautioned against blaming undocumented foreign nationals for crime in the tourism sector.

“Do they affect us when it comes to issues of crime? Yes, we get impacted, but I do not want to say it is only the illegals that are causing crime in our tourism,” he said.

Tourism needs stronger governance

Pilane said Mpumalanga had two major tourism challenges: governance and the visitor economy.

He said the province recorded 2.7 million visitors in 2025, but tourism spending remained low.

“We have people coming into the province in numbers … and yet, our spend was as little as 8%,” he said.

According to Pilane, this meant that for every R100 visitors had available to spend, only R8 was being spent in the province.

Pilane said Mpumalanga had significant tourism potential but needed to address the barriers preventing visitors from spending more money and staying longer in the province.

“All we need to do, like any other destination in the country, is to sort out those things that we have identified as a barrier to translating this tourism into serious economic growth that will create jobs and deal with issues of poverty,” he said.

He said this undermined tourism’s potential to drive economic growth, job creation, poverty alleviation, and enterprise development.

Migrant workers in tourism

Pilane said the tourism sector also faced skills shortages, particularly in management.

He said businesses in the province had previously agreed that no more than 15% of their employees should be non-South Africans and that those employees should bring specific skills.

“One of the biggest challenges that South Africa has is management skills,” he said.

He urged the tourism sector to work more closely with universities to ensure graduates had skills that matched industry requirements.

Pilane also called for a broader approach to tourism development, involving departments such as roads, safety, and social development.

“We need able people who will assist us in growing the economy of the province.”