Tinotenda Hove – Authorities in Free State Province intercepted a bus carrying 32 undocumented Zimbabwean nationals — among them young children and infants — during a late-night operation on Thursday along the N1 near Bloemfontein.

The stop was part of intensified Easter weekend road safety checks targeting long-distance transport. Officials said the bus, which was en route to Cape Town, was pulled over at a roadblock where authorities made the discovery.

Free State MEC for Community Safety, Roads and Transport, Jabu Mbalula, confirmed that some of those detained were extremely young, including infants just four months old.
Investigators have raised suspicions of possible human trafficking after noticing irregularities among passengers.

Some adults were travelling with children who had different surnames, while in other cases, the adults possessed valid travel documents but the children accompanying them had none.
Questions have also emerged over how the bus managed to pass through multiple provinces after entering South Africa via Beitbridge Border Post without being flagged earlier.

Mbalula acknowledged gaps in coordination between provinces, stressing the need for improved enforcement systems.
“What we have discovered is that these buses, when they cross at our border gates, are compliant,” he said.

“But because we interviewed the travellers themselves who were passengers in the bus, they told us — some of them said they were picked up in Louis Trichardt, some said they were picked up somewhere in Johannesburg.”
“Now you can see when they pass at the border gate, when they are searched or looked at, everybody’s able to produce a legitimate travelling document. But along the way, people get picked up,” Mbalula explained.

He added that the bus driver was not taken into custody, noting that he cooperated fully with authorities and was found to have both a valid driver’s licence and the necessary public driving permit.