In Summary
According to the South African Revenue Service, this was the largest seizure ever at a South African border or point of entry.
Johannesburg. A good number of young Tanzanians
have reportedly joined Johannesburg city’s criminal underworld,
including being used as couriers for drug traffickers.
As some of them are working as hairdressers or
street vendors; a large number are jobless, drug-addicted and desperate
to go home – if they could only afford it.
Many of these keep body and soul together by
working as drug mules, transporting cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine
(tik) and methaqualone (mandrax) from Tanzania to South Africa.
Tik and small amounts of cocaine also travel the
other way. Edom Mwaikambo, the head of the Tanzanian community in
Durban, estimated in a phone interview that barely a quarter of his
compatriots in South Africa had legal jobs, and that many were drug
dealers.
In recent years, many Tanzanians have settled in
South Africa claiming that they are looking for a better life. Some are
musicians who say they want to perform for the Tanzanian community in
Johannesburg. They take advantage of a 90-day visa exemption which
enables them to travel between the two countries freely.
A 2012 report from United Nations for Drugs and
Crime (UNODC) names Tanzania as a major transit point for the
trafficking of drugs in Africa. It says that East Africa, also including
Kenya, is Africa’s main area of entry for Afghan heroin, mandrax from
India and China and cocaine from Latin America. West Africa, it says, is
an important point of exit.
The scale of the trade is suggested by recent drug
seizures. The UNODC’s 2013 World Drug Report reveals that in June last
year the South African authorities seized 860,000 mandrax tablets –
approximately 350 kg – en route from Tanzania, via Botswana, to South
Africa’s Western Cape province.
In July this year, two Tanzanian citizens, Agnes
Masogange and Melissa Edward, were arrested at O.R. Tambo International
Airport with six bags of tik worth more than R42.6 million (about Sh7
billion).
According to the South African Revenue Service, this was the largest seizure ever at a South African border or point of entry.
A source said that one of the two had been seen
before the arrest in central Johannesburg shopping for expensive
articles. The women are currently awaiting trial. A spokesperson from
the Tanzanian High Commission in Pretoria, Habib Awesi, added that the
foreign affairs ministry had recently informed the embassy that two
other Tanzanians had been arrested for drug-related offences.
Awesi also said that the murder of three Tanzanian men in Belgravia, Cape Town, on August 13 was also allegedly drug-related.
Over the past month The Citizen has investigated
the role of Johannesburg’s Tanzanians in the consumption and trafficking
of narcotics. Members of the community were interviewed and a shared
house in Jeppestown, where more than five addicts share a single room,
was visited.
Ali (not his real name) came to South Africa five years ago and
now works in the Johannesburg CBD. He confirmed that many local
Tanzanians are addicts and that they make a living by transporting
banned substances between the two countries.
He named three Tanzanians ,residents in
Johannesburg as being kingpins of the trade, one of whom “has been
jailed for drugs, but owns a house and is still very rich”.
He claimed that the individual was himself
drug-dependent and had continued to consume large quantities of heroin
while in prison.
Another small businessman, who has been in South
Africa for more than 10 years, said that it is unusual for traffickers
to fly between the countries.
Most travel by bus through the Tunduma post on the
Tanzanian-Zambian border to Harare in Zimbabwe or Blantyre in Malawi,
and then through Musina into Limpopo in South Africa.
The UNODC report states that it is becoming common
practice to move narcotics between the countries in small consignments
via air courier. Some Tanzanian mules use the practice of swallowing
plastic sachets of drugs and retrieving them later.
This can have tragic consequences: last year two
Tanzanians, Hassan Wanyama and Ali Mpili, died, one at the Braeside
Lodge in Harare and the other in Johannesburg, after the cocaine sachets
they had ingested burst. Mpili had swallowed 80 sachets.
“They choose road transport because some customs
officers at those border posts are part of their network. The bribes
range from more than Sh300,000 to Sh500,000 (R2,000 to R3,500),” he
said.
As a result, all Tanzanians are now coming under
suspicion. “At the border they call us by the name ‘drugs’ and we are
searched attentively and differently from others,” a Tanzanian woman
said.
At the run-down Jeppestown house, Hassan (not his
real name) confirmed that he is a heroin addict. He did not admit to
trafficking, but he said that he knows most of the Tanzanian drug-users
in South Africa and appeared to have a good understanding of the trade.
Hassan confirmed that road transport is the
preferred way of moving narcotics between Tanzania and South Africa. The
illegally imported cocaine is evidently heavily cut with other
substances to make it affordable to poor users – a gram goes for between
R25 and R100. (In Tanzania it is even cheaper.)
He said young women were normally used as mules as they were less likely to be arrested at the border.
As a cover, some of the women pretended to work as prostitutes for a time after their arrival in South Africa.
In an interview, the head of Tanzania’s
Anti-Narcotics Police Unit, Assistant Commissioner of Police Godfrey
Nzowa, said the unit is doing all it can to ensure drugs from outside
Tanzania do not reach local users.
“We are trying to control drugs that enter our country not only from South Africa but from around the world,” he said.
Nzowa said the current street value for cocaine and heroin in Tanzania is Sh45million (R300,000) per kilogramme.
Urging Tanzanians to join the fight against drugs
by naming dealers without fear, he said that a local drug baron was
arrested last year with 211kg of heroin but had since fled Tanzania.
SAPS spokesperson Lieutenant-General Solomon
Makgale said the South African authorities did not keep records of drug
crimes according to the nationality of the offenders.
However, he said that the South African police
have very close working relations with other members of Interpol and the
Southern African Regional Police Chiefs Cooperation Organisation in
fighting the trafficking of narcotics.
A spokesperson for the Drugs Control Commission,
Florence Mlay, said that the commission is not aware of the Tanzanian
drug dealers and users in South Africa.
“Currently we don’t have any reports concerning
Tanzanians in South Africa, but since the media is working on it, we
will focus on that situation,” she said.
source: The citizen
source: The citizen
