Archaic Botswana passports are a problem to SA

But since the country changed to the high-tech system that recognises only e-passports, Batswana attempting to cross the border into South Africa with the old manual passport have been met with rejection. South African immigration officers are equally frustrated because the old Botswana document is not machine-readable.Processing it manually is a long operation.

At the Tlokweng/Kopfontein border post, the Mmegi team finds agonised faces as they painstakingly put old Botswana passports through computers. They keep calling for help from one another as the machines fail to read the info in the outdated documents.