The Sunday News
Simba Jemwa, Sunday News Correspondent
Drug trafficking has become a major source of revenue for organised crime groups in Zimbabwe, some of whom are now also involved in other forms of serious crime such as smuggling firearms into the country.
The Zimbabwe-South Africa border is one of most used borderlands on the African continent. Its official entry point known as the Beitbridge Border Post, comprising the bridge itself which spans the Limpopo River, is the busiest road border post in Southern Africa.
The border between the two countries is naturally demarcated by the crocodile and hippo infested Limpopo River.
This natural boundary is artificially reinforced with a 200km high-security fence and is patrolled by Zimbabwean and South African police and army on both sides of the border. In spite of its apparent invincibility, smuggling of contraband including drugs characterise life along the border.
This illicit drug smuggling occurs along the infinite illegal entry points found along the border as well as through the Beitbridge Border Post itself. Cross-border traders, criminals, dealers, touts, bus crews, and vendors form part of the paraphernalia of the borderland as they engage in illicit activities to avoid customs and immigration authorities.
According to information gleaned during an ongoing investigation into drug trafficking by this publication, one of the most well-known smuggling spots lies approximately 10km west of Beitbridge, near Maroi Farming in Limpopo.
Sources revealed that numerous holes have been cut into the fence by illegal border jumpers and smugglers – the “Maroi hole” has become a passage big enough for a medium-sized truck to drive through and has often been used to smuggle tons of drugs into the country.
A clearly busy path crossing the border revealed fresh footprints and tracks of what looked like corrugated iron sheets hauled through the bushes and all the way across the Limpopo River. The part of river is dry for the better part of the year, with just a few patches of small puddles, making it easy to cross. There were also several donkey carts parked on the sand dunes on both sides of the river. These donkey carts are an integral part of the smuggling operation.
“They are waiting for clients who want to get goods including drugs like broncleer, skunk, crack cocaine and crystal meth into Zimbabwe. They make a killing out of this illicit business,” said a Zimbabwean national who regularly uses the Maroi route to smuggle goods into Zimbabwe who asked not to be named out of fear of retribution. Other traffickers use unknowing truck drivers to smuggle drugs into the country. Often the players wrap up their packages and disguise them as the “usual parcels” one regularly brings into the country. Often, traffickers will ask unsuspecting truckers to carry a parcel from South Africa to Zimbabwe and because most of these truckers are regulars across the border, customs officials are almost always lenient with them and their small parcels.
Imported vehicles entering the country from South Africa have also been used to ferry drugs into the country. Most security personnel will not be bothered to give a more than cursory search of vehicles loaded onto car carriers.
“My boss uses cars that are being imported into the country. Because they are imported legally, no one ever bothers to check if they are carrying anything and his is how our stuff gets into the country from South Africa. Our suppliers in South Africa just load them into a car or two and sometimes unknowingly, drivers bring the drugs into the country. At cross border buses to Bulawayo and Harare are used to smuggle drugs from South Africa,” a source revealed to the Sunday News.
Smuggling of more than the usual marijuana is at record levels which has the added effect of a high level of drug availability at street. There is significant, and often deadly, competition between rival organised crime groups at all stages of class A drugs production and supply. There is also corruption at every stage of the drug supply chain, including through the use of corrupt police, port and airport officials.
Organised crime groups involved in drug trafficking are typically also involved in a range of criminal activity, and the profits from illegal drugs are used to fund other forms of criminal operations, including buying illegal firearms.
Lately, Bulawayo has had an upsurge in crimes associated with drug trafficking or drug abuse and is very often violent, with direct links to the criminal use of firearms and gang feud knife attacks, and traffickers frequently exploit young and vulnerable people. Cannabis gangs in particular are notorious for the trafficking and exploitation of school children and other vulnerable people to carry out work in selling drugs within their schools.
Urban street gangs play a key – and rising – role in the distribution of drugs, particularly crystal meth and crack cocaine. Local drug trafficking is not defined by the distance between the point of control and the point of distribution, but rather the mechanism by which that method of supply is supported; namely the use of cell phones and the use of vulnerable adults and children to facilitate the distribution.
Police have always maintained high alert to deal with the drug menace, although the illegal trade, like the oldest profession in the world- prostitution-continues to flourish.
Meanwhile, more than 7 000 suspected criminals have been arrested countrywide for drug-related offences while more than a million kgs of marijuana and 17 tons of crystal methamphetamine were seized in various drug busts, officials say.
Statistics released by the Zimbabwe Republic Police show that during the course of the year to date, law officers arrested 7 263 suspects for offences ranging from possession of marijuana to distribution of Class A drugs like cocaine and crystal methamphetamine popularly known as crystal meth or ‘guka’ in street lingo.
In a statement released by the ZRP national spokesperson, Assistant Paul Nyathi last week, police seized 1 013 024 kilograms and 1 143 plants of marijuana in the year to date beginning in January. More worrying is the 17 323 kilograms of crystal meth, 1 241.33 kilograms of ephedrine and the 6.04 kilograms of cocaine also seized during the same period. Also seized were 1, 331 (100ml) bottles of Broncleer, 41 (100ml) bottles of Histalix as well as various skin lightening creams and unregistered medicines. The value of the seized drugs is estimated to have a street value of ZWL38, 206, 058- @RealSimbaJemwa
