THE borders between South Africa, Swaziland and Mozambique continue to be a serious problem for the South African Police Service.

At the weekend, the police recovered a state-of-the-art BMW X5 that was hijacked in Swaziland.

"If these thugs can steal a top-of-the-range vehicle like the X5, it goes to show that we definitely need to pull up our socks in crime prevention," Mpumalanga police spokesperson Superintendent Abie Khoabane said yesterday.

The BMW was found abandoned in Nelspruit.

The borders are manned by the police, who took over the responsibility from the soldiers several years ago.

Deputy Minister of Defence Thabang Makwetla recently said that soldiers needed to be redeployed on the borders.

Mpumalanga police recently confiscated several vehicles, drugs and clothing that had been smuggled across the the three countries' borders.

A number of people were also arrested for smuggling goods across the borders.