Noordoewer, Namibia to Vioolsdrif, South Africa | Customs and Immigration

RSA -> NA
Super straightforward.
On RSA side, immigration stamps you out and makes you fill out a gate exit slip (no fee - this is collected at a booth a bit further down) then sends you to the police desk for some formality I already forgot. Customs confirmed I should not stamp out my CPD because staying in SACU.

Note that it was brutally hot 46C and the offices offer some respite.

NA side stamp in (super quick) then go pay the road tax (credit cards accepted, N236 for moto, N371 for cars, 4x4). Then they send you over to customs where they just ask you if you have booze cigarettes etc.

All in all could be done in maybe 20 minutes but we loitered much longer taking advantage of AC and shade.

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One of the easiest border posts we have gone through. We traveled from South Africa to Namibia. On the SA side we started with immigration for passport stamps, then customs and police. Very easy process and no queues. The SA customs official told us that we did not need to export the car on the carnet because of the customs union between SA, Namibia and Botswana. Though skeptical we carried on to the Namibia side. This took a little longer. As it turns out cheese and meat products are not allowed in! Best be a little better prepared than us and check the border / customs requirements. Very friendly officers though.

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arrival by intercape bus SA to Nam, around 3 hours for both border sides between 1-4am. The form for Nam border post is distributed up front in the bus. very relaxed, but takes time until all passengers are checked at each border post. some bags, but not all are checked. in our case at each border some bags very removed from storage put to the side, the people who these belonged to had to unpack and show the contents.

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Nam border you fill a formulier in and get out stamp in your paspoort and ok for you CDP stamp!
ZA: you get paper for your car they stamp it and when you get out you must give it them with nummer on it. you go for paspoort and get stamp and ask the nummer of the paper and by police you stamp your CDP! no health checks today Very easy at both side it was 10 minutes

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French passeport. Namibia to South Africa. With a foreigner car. Very easy border.

Namibia side take like 5 minutes.

South Africa side was quick at the immigration but at the custom takes almost an hour... They did not know what to do.

First they told us that we do not have to do anything for our car, we said that normally we should do a TIP or the carnet but they did not know about that... So we asked around and same answer... So we get up in our car when a custom manager called us and told us that the person that we had at the desk did wrong and we have to do a TIP or stamp the CPD...
Si be care you really need a TIP or a CPD especially if you have a left hand car.
Only few people know what to do so ask for a manager if they do not want to do nothing.

Important : The CPD is not required for South Africa. You can give them the CPD if you have it. But if you do not have it they can do a TIP for 6 month. Free of charge.

Nice people just not competent enough.

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NAM to RSA with RSA registered vehicle:
NAM:
- Stop at gate - police ask if anything to declare.
- Park vehicle and proceed to immigration.
- Fill out immigration forms, stamp passport, fill in book. No recording of vehicle out of NAM.
RSA:
- Stop at police check - get given health screening forms and vehicle gate pass to fill out.
- Visit health screening office in corner for checking documents and temperarure check as well as gate pass stamp on reverse.
- Immigration (door 1) stamp in passport and stamp gate pass.
- Police check (door 3) in of passport and gate pass stamp again.
- Drive to police gate and stop vehicle and hand gate pass to officer.

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Easy border. Covid regulations changed a few days ago. PCR test no longer required if you are fully vaccinated. Friendly staff. Took us about 1 hour all together.

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From SA into Nam

South African police were very thorough. Very suspicious that we held a UK passport but owned a Zambian vehicle (despite having a visa to live and work in Zambia). Kept asking for more vehicle and ID papers, but couldn’t explain exactly what papers they wanted. Even asked to see an SMS message proving the bank transfer when we made payment to buy the vehicle! Took about an hour for them to let us through.
Everything else for leaving SA and entering Nam was very quick and straightforward though.

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Everthing went smooth entering Namibia! due to covid the want to see a nevative result no older than 7 days. they aske for the first stay but thats it no detailed travel plan as stated on the webpage

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You don’t need to have your CDP stamped here. SA, Nambia and Botswana are a customs union. We already had our covid test done in Windhoek, but we saw them doing rapid tests outside the health check post. We were here on a Sunday: extremely quiet.

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Namibia to South Africa. No issues whatsoever. Done and dusted in 20 minutes both sides. No checks of any sort. We crossed on a Sunday morning and it was very quite. We left South Africa last November by land and were worried to know how many days we’d get for our visa. We had no issues and where just asked how long we needed.

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Denied entry into South Africa as a New Zealand passport holder, apparently we need a visa in advance now, so please warn other Kiwi’s as I didn’t know about this change (too many dodgy South Africans trying to enter NZ visa free, NZ said visa in advance, SA reciprocated).
Had another passport so I was ok. No need to bother with customs if you have a carnet.

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Again we used this border crossing now to enter RSA from Namibia. Again we were asked to prove that our car is roadworthy. This time we were prepared and gave the officer our carnet de passage which he accepted as a proof of roadworthyness.

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Took the night bus from Windhoek to Cape Town. Arrived at border at 2:30AM. Namibia stamped us out in two minutes. On South Africa side, it was horrible and they made a big show out of everything. First, I asked for a specific page to be stamped because I'm running out of pages. The border guard ignored me and stamped an empty page, made a mistake and then stamped another empty page! Then we waited for the guards to search the bags. First they said take all your bags off the bus, then the boss arrived and said no, we'll take the bags off ourselves. So two border guards unload everything. They open everyone's bags to search them. Then they tell all the men to come inside and search each man's body, pat us down, cup our balls. Then they have all our passports in a stack, proceed to call out each person's name to collect their passport. We finished after two hours at 4:30AM. Worst border crossing in Africa.

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The SA side is excellent! The officers are very friendly but thorough in their check of vehicles (mostly looking for organic material). The staff on the Namibian side were not friendly or helpful (when entering and leaving) but the process is quite straight forward. We paid NAD295 for the Namibian road tax with an SA-registered car.

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To us this border crossing was not completely hassle free. Namibia in, they asked for our carnet and did not know what to do with it. they sent us to another customs official who also did not know what to do. We explained that the carnet does not apply here since Namibia is part of the customs Union. In the end we left customs without using the carnet which is correct. Then at the final check with the police they demanded us to proof that our car was road worthy because we did not have the round sticker like the South Africans have. We could not show him any document to his liking and threatend to fine us. All of a sudden when it became clear to him that we were not willing to pay a fine or any other amount we were fine to go. hmmm. The border crossing took us at least one hour while we were the only ones crossing at that time.

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Still quick and easy border Crossing! Open 24/7, no que.

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Agreed, all very quick and easy.

Just one tip... the ladies toilets on the Namibia side are among the worst/dirtiest I have seen in 12 months of travel around Africa! Wait until you get to the SA side, much more pleasant!

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Best easy border ever. Fast and smiles everywhere.

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One of the easiest borders we have had so far! Very friendly staff at the South African side. When entering South Africa they check for meat, fruit, vegetables and firewood, basically every organic material. They took our firewood and we had to eat our oranges right away!

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Easy border on both sides. South Africans were really welcoming and nice. We just needed to go to immigration and police, no one wanted to see us at customs. Also the check of the car was done in less than 1 minute.

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easy border! they are checking the papers of the rental car, we paid 277 for the tax road and ask if we have alcool in the car!

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Indeed, easiest Border so far. We also got our Temporary Import Paper for free (although we normally travel with Carnet).

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Dutch citizens without Carnet de Passage.

My God, this was the easiest and friendliest bordercrossing ever! Namibia was easy: just a passport stamp out.
South Africa you get a piece of paper at the gate which is your 'borderpass'.
Then immigration is an easy passportstamp, TIP at customs is easy and free(and valid for 6 months whilst we asked for 90 days!), police is also an easy stamp and registration.
All in the same building, without hassle and straightforward.

When you leave there's 1 more stop where they check your car and you have to hand in the borderpass.

15 min. without a Carnet as well and incl. a bathroom break (hehe ;-)

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absolutely easy boarder, around 15 min for both sides if you have a Carnet de Passage, very clean and hassle free, we crossed it in January 2015, have fun. 

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