Jersey barriers were seen as a solution to prevent cross-border crime across South Africa's porous border with Mozambique, but the 8km project that got under way more than four years ago has been on hold pending completion of a Special Investigative Unit investigation into the R85.7 million tender.

Government officials and business people could find themselves in hot water after the Special Investigative Unit (SIU) has completed the probe into the R85.7-million tender to install concrete Jersey barriers - also known as border walls - along the porous fence that separates South Africa and Mozambique in the far north of KwaZulu-Natal.

For years now the border communities of Umkhanyakude District, including Manguzi, Jozini, Mbazwana, Hluhluwe and others, have been under siege from armed cross-border syndicates who attack them in their homes especially at night, rob, abduct them, take them in their own vehicles and dump them there while syndicate members smuggle their (the victims') vehicles through the porous fence into the Mozambique wilderness.

The installation of concrete Jersey barriers along the porous fence that separates South Africa and Mozambique in the far north of KwaZulu-Natal was hailed as the solution that would bring an end to vehicle smuggling in the...