Nearly 350 000 South Africans used cocaine before Covid-19 in 2020, consuming about 18 800 tonnes. (Photo by Bodo Marks/picture alliance via Getty Images)
South Africa’s domestic cocaine market is growing, with East Africa and the rest of southern Africa playing a key role in the transnational flow of the highly lucrative illegal narcotic, according to a report by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime.
The report, A Powder Storm: The Cocaine Markets of East and Southern Africa, draws its conclusion from fieldwork across 16 countries in the region. It was drawn from group discussions with more than 1 000 drug users, personal interviews with more than 1 700 informants, including more than 400 drug couriers and distributors, 70 high level drug importers and 40 law enforcement personnel.
“The region’s growing popularity as a transit route is bolstered by capable but poorly monitored coastal container port facilities, weak marine enforcement capacity, political environments that favour illicit traders, and established maritime and air links to the destination markets of the EU, West Asia, East Asia and Australia,” it says.
“As these countries become more prominent as transit points for cocaine, the use of the drug in their local markets increases.”
South Africa a cocaine cornerstone
South Africa is both an importer and exporter of cocaine, via airports and seaports, according to the report.
Through maritime means, cocaine arrives in the country in large volumes from Santos port in Brazil in shipping containers — especially at the country’s busiest port in Durban — or via smaller vessels that transport the drug onshore.
The Western Cape coastline, “with its plethora of fishing vessels” is a “conducive environment” for smaller vessels carrying cocaine.
The South African Police Service cracked down on one such vessel in March last year when 973 pressed bricks of cocaine — weighing nearly one tonne — were seized in Saldanha Bay. The shipment is believed to have been en route to Eastern Europe.
The report says cocaine transported via air from South Africa to the Indian Ocean islands by travellers “is a growing concern”.
In 2018/19, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission identified South Africa as the “key embarkation point” by weight for cocaine seized during that surveillance year.
The report says the domestic market for both powder and crack cocaine is well-established and growing.
In 2020, the cost of a gram of powder cocaine varied from R400 to more than R1 000, while crack ranged from R50 to R75 per 0.05 gram. The wholesale price for a kilogram brick of pure cocaine on arrival in Cape Town at the time of the research was between R350 000 and R400 000.
The population size and use analysis concluded that in 2020, an estimated 350 000 people used cocaine — crack or powder — in South Africa, and consumed approximately 18 800 tonnes of the drug. At the time of the research, it was estimated that three-quarters of all cocaine users in South Africa consumed the drug in its crack form.
“Contrary to popular opinion, cocaine is no longer a drug of the privileged elite. It is now a core commodity of the region’s domestic drug markets, particularly in its more popular crack form,” the report says.
Key findings on the cocaine networks in Eastern and southern Africa:
- Cocaine is widely available and used across the region and cocaine seizures in the region are not an accurate reflection of the flow of the illicit drug.
- Trafficking cocaine within and through the region is a vast enterprise. Interviews suggest that there is a large volume of cocaine moving to and through the region.
- The Mozambique Channel is a thriving cocaine corridor. The coastal states that have territorial waters in the Mozambique Channel lack capacity to undertake any meaningful maritime monitoring or enforcement actions in the channel.
- Domestic drug market surveillance and data are limited.
- Regional cocaine markets are being sustained by dysfunctional governments and institutional complicity and corruption.
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