Home Affairs is launching a pilot project to train immigration officers with the help of Cuban officials, Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said on Tuesday.
She said immigration staff from OR Tambo International Airport would be the first to follow the programme and their posts would be staffed by soldiers transferred from the defence force.
"We are going to recruit about 350 people from the defence force. They are going to go to OR Tambo after they are trained, and they are going to the airport as home affairs officials."
At this point, existing airport immigration staff would be placed on the new training programme spearheaded by a dozen senior Cuban immigration officials.
"The issue about the Cubans is that they are very thorough about looking at people coming into the country, but once you are in the country you feel free and you are not followed, you are not arrested," Dlamini-Zuma said.
"They have a system that is very good. And their training in terms of assessing people who are just coming in, especially around issues where people are bringing in things like drugs... there are things we thought we could learn from them.
"The Cubans are going to be training the trainers."
The South African government would pay them salaries equivalent to that of a local deputy director general of a government department.
The minister said the idea of greater co-operation between home affairs and defence flowed from the deployment last year of soldiers to patrol South Africa's borders.
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