Focus on drugs: The police don’t bother with dagga; they can’t even cope with the trade in hard drugs
Franco Fracassi and Laura Evans
FOR the people who run South Africa’s burgeoning drugs trade, the forces of law and order represent, at best, a slight inconvenience. In Johannesburg, Cape Town or Durban, the story is much the same: police are bribed, intimidated or simply locked out.
“What is the reason for the visit?” a hotel receptionist in Johannesburg’s Hillbrow asks two police officers. They are trying to catch a suspect in the act. Unimpressed, the receptionist calls the hotel owner, who takes five minutes to come to the desk before greeting the two: “Fuck you. I don’t want fucking police in my hotel.”
He only relents when the officers give the target’s room number, but then spends another 10 minutes haggling before allowing the raid to resume. The would-be raiders find nothing.
In Hillbrow, this episode, one weekend earlier this month, is still an achievement for police drug-busters. Police know who the dealers are, what they sell, where they live, their girlfriends’ details, even what time they go to bed. The problem is getting to them.
Money soon piles up from a constant trade in Mandrax, cocaine, Ecstasy and acid, and a fraction of the takings can secure one of the masses of seedy, run-down hotels or blocks of flats that line Hillbrow’s streets. The going rate for a hotel is around R3-million, in cash.
“The drug lords are very rich,” says Hillbrow police captain Hendrik de Klerk. “They can afford to buy entire buildings. They pay cash, fortify the entrances and the parking lot and sell.” Police have to negotiate to get in to raid, even with a search warrant.
So, on Hillbrow’s Soper Street, Nigerians peddle cocaine from parking lots ringed with razor-wire; drug-sellers occupy entire sidewalks on streets such as O’Reilly; heroin is sold from iron gate-clad hotels on Esselen Street and Lily Street, with women standing outside, ready to raise the alarm if any police venture near. The headquarters of the Nigerians believed to control the district’s drugs trade are on Olivia Street. The police say they just can’t get in.
“How can we prevent someone from buying a building?” says South African Narcotics Bureau superintendent EA Kadwa.
On Durban’s Point Road, the dealers have still to branch out into real estate. But they don’t need such protection from police interference: over four hours, during prime selling-time on a Friday night, no police patrol passed by.
“We pay most of them,” says Bob, a 30- something character who has an army of dealers working under him. “How much depends on the rank, maybe from R50 a day upwards.”
Unencumbered, Bob and his friends do a brisk trade in Mandrax and crack, finding their most lucrative market in white youngsters who like to load up for parties. “Mandrax costs R40 a tablet, and crack around about R150,” he says. His other favourite clients are the city’s prostitutes, who prefer cocaine.
Police and dealers on Point Street agree that little of the drug supply comes through the city’s harbour.
Most comes from Johannesburg, packed inside stolen or hijacked cars, which are stripped down in KwaMashu, the township to the north of the city where Bob and his dealers live. Eleven BMWs sit in one workshop in the township. All are in pristine condition, all are destined to be stripped down. The mechanic there says he has been arrested once or twice, but he doesn’t think the cars are stolen.
In Cape Town’s Manenberg township, police estimate that 80% of the male population use drugs – a mixture of dagga and Mandrax freely available in the area where even the People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) fear to tread. Pagad may have shot and burnt Rashaad Staggie, but his Hard Living gang, and their rivals, the Americans, still see Manenberg as their domain, and its 50 000 inhabitants as their people.
Everyone in the township claims to be a gangster, or a dealer. They come up and talk proudly about the money they make selling Mandrax at R30 a shot, and about the number of people they have killed.
“Do you see these spots on my face?” one says. “Every spot is a murder.” His face has 17 marks, symmetrically positioned about his nose. Another face has 14.
The men speak freely, knowing there are no uniformed police around, and that those working in plainclothes are reluctant to act. One plainclothes officer does appear as a drug deal is going down, discreetly flashing his ID.
“I live and work here,” he says. “I know all the gangsters and drug dealers. I even know the guy where your friend has gone to buy the stuff. But what should I do? The prisons are overcrowded, and they would be out in a few days. Then I will have problems with him and with the others.”
Franco Fracassi is a freelance journalist, working in South Africa on an Italian television documentary on the international drugs trade; Laura Evans is his assistant