Listen here.Following the recent R1-billion drug bust at Beitbridge, there is renewed focus on the warning by KZN Provincial Police Commissioner General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi that South Africa could become another Mexico or El Salvador if politically- and police-connected drug cartels were not dealt with. In this interview with Chris Steyn, Willem Els of the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) shares the findings of the ISS' latest drug study. “On the operational level, we're sitting with severe challenges. We've got most of the senior commissioners of police that are being arrested or suspended or so on. So we've got a power vacuum there and so on… one of the biggest challenges is the severe disinvestment in your capability in the police, intelligence-wise, as well as operational. We do not have boots on the ground. We do not have sufficient equipment and infrastructure…. ” Els details the ISS’ recommendations, and expresses optimism that with the appointment of General Mkhwanazi as Head of the Organised Crime Desk, “there might be some improvement now”. .Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..Edited transcript of the interview.Chris Steyn (00:01.41)Fears are growing that South Africa is turning into another Bogota following that one billion rand recent drug bust. With me is Willem Els of the Institute for Security Studies. Welcome Willem.Willem Els (00:18.344)Hello Chris.Chris Steyn (00:20.942)Please remind our viewers what General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi said about drug trafficking. That warning.Willem Els (00:28.978)Yeah, I think we're here today because of what happened about almost a year ago on the 6th of July when he had that infamous and that groundbreaking interview where he came up with allegations - and the centre of those allegations were that the drug cartels. that are actually taking over the police, government and that they are having it their way. Of course, we saw the Ad Hoc Committee, we saw what is going on in the Madlanga Commission. At the moment, it revealed a lot, it shocked, really, it shook the nation. I don't think the revelations...that came out there is complete. I think it's maybe the ears of the hippo and we will have to look at it further. So that prompted us to look at, in the past two years we had various clandestine laboratories that were discovered. I mean, the one at Groblersdal, almost two billion rand with the precursors and so on. And then we saw the one… We saw the latest one near Rustenburg.And what happened there is what we didn't experience previously was the presence of the cooks. Now the cooks, as I refer to them, are your Mexican cartels that are sending their chemists here to come and mix and prepare the drugs. And that is mainly your methamphetamines, your Tik. And then also what is being prepared in South Africa is your Nyaope and that is your…m that is your heroin, very low grade heroin that is mixed with...Willem Els (02:20.658)…cuttings and some of them even say chlorine, baking soda and household bleaches. So it is very, very dangerous but also very addictive and it makes it very cheap. So those are the drugs that we see that came to the fore. But I think what we focus on today is, you know, South Africa is in a unique position where ever since the 50s when they started to manufacture Mandrax and Mandrax was administered, was prescribed, etc.But by the 70s, they started to move away from it, et cetera. And it became an abused drug in South Africa…where we are currently one of, if not the only country in the world where there's still a very strong market for Mandrax. Now, why is that? That is the question that we're trying to answer today.Chris Steyn (03:54.91)Yes, I was just going to ask you, Willem, why Mandrax has stayed so popular in South Africa despite the rest of the world moving on - and the latest drug bust confirmed that.Willem Els (04:06.43)Yeah, you know, there are various reasons for that. The first one is that, you know, your Methaqualone that is being used to prepare the Mandrax, it can be locally manufactured. They can mix it here or they can smuggle it in like what they did when they did the bust of just over 700 kilograms at Beitbridge about a month ago. So it is the free availability of the precursor. And also the relative ease to prepare the Mandrax in your clandestine laboratories. So what they then do is they take…, they prepare it, they mix it, and then they actually set it into a pil. So it's like a round tablet, and then they sell it. It is safe, it is easy to manufacture, it's not easy to detect, it is small. They can move large quantities, etc.But because of what we see in especially the Western Cape, on the Flats, in the Northern Cape, parts of Gauteng, Eastern Cape and so on, we see especially part of your gang culture, it is very strong. And you must understand that when you use your drugs, for instance, if you use your methamphetamines like your Tik, that's upper, makes you feel good…. But now the guy, he took this and he has to go to work. He has to get it down. And this is what Mandrax then does. They've taken Mandrax and then they scrape it. They don't use a whole tablet. They scrape it up to six to sometimes nine times. So it's nine users for one tablet. If a tablet sells for about 60 bucks, that's what it...quite a cheap dose that you can prepare for yourself. And they mix it then typically with Dagga, also sometimes with tobacco, but Dagga is the most popular one. And then they smoke it, it calms them down, it mellows them out and they can operate again. So that is where your uppers and your downers where it comes in. And because of the price, if you look at the price of tic, it really, it's almost halved in price…Willem Els (06:26.5)…after they started to discover all these clandestine labs. Not because they busted one lab now, but because, you know, if you look at a rule of thumb, with drugs you never know how many got away and how many you encountered because of the nature of it. So the rule of thumb is about 30 % is intercepted. So 70 % of them is still out here. And if you just look at the sheer quantities of what they discovered at the clandestine labs. It means that there must be an abundance of these drugs, not only for local consumption, but of course also for exporters when it comes to your methamphetamines and so on. But the difference between the two, we do not find a lot of evidence that your Mandrax is also exported. So what we found here is that locally those are being consumed because of the vibrant market that has been here since the 70s.Chris Steyn (07:25.153)Now that big haul that came into South Africa was intercepted on the South African side of the Zimbabwean border. Do you know whether that was as a result of a tip off? One has to wonder how many of those trucks or vehicles that had not come through before then.Willem Els (07:42.207)Yeah, yeah, normally, typically how it works, you know, you will get them and they say in the statement that it originated from Malawi. So from Malawi, it must have come through either Tanzania or it was manufactured locally there, the precursor, or it was imported through Tanzania or northern Mozambique. So we don't know how far that goes. But what we found in the statement is that they said it was an intelligence-driven operation. Now, for those drugs to cross into Zimbabwe, it had to move through the Malawian border and customs and security into the Zimbabwean border. Then it was transported across the country to Beitbridge, where it had to clear their customs. It was checked there by this side. And I can tell you now, if you look at the detection equipment that they have on the Zimbabwean side, it is by far superior to what South Africa has got. They received a huge amount of funding, training and equipment from especially America in order to curb that. So how did it pass through there and was only intercepted in South Africa? So that is the one hand, we said it was because of intelligence, but also I think it was because South Africa also upgraded some of the equipment and they started to use it. We see that...from the Acting Minister, he's got a new plan, he's got this strategy, he's really with the limited resources that they're doing, they're making some inroads. So that is just an indication for us that some of the measures put in place are starting to pay off.Chris Steyn (09:29.517)Now Willem, the General, the KZN provincial commissioner warned that unless drug trafficking was dealt with, that South Africa would or could become another Mexico… You've just done this huge drug study. What are your recommendations?Willem Els (09:46.461)Yeah, I think we should heed to his caution. Of course, they got much more information than we will ever have. They have the intelligence and all the other reports. They have the sharing of intelligence. That is what is important for us because it is transnational. The bust on your, especially your cocaine, heroin at the airport and so on, that is because of your sharing of information and intelligence between service to service, et cetera, et cetera. And we must commend them on that. So what they tell us, if they caution on that, they must have good information on that. Now what we see, if we look at South Africa and we look at our crime rate, our crime rate, our criminality index, we are number two in Africa. If we look at the murder rate in terms of murders, we constantly feature in the top 10 in the world. The other countries that also feature there with us are typically your South American countries where you just mentioned them. And that is part of the culture that goes with the environment that is created by these drugs and by the drug smuggling. Now, what happens is from South America, your drugs are being fed to their markets, that's up to America and to Europe. So when they started to make it more difficult for them to use those routes, they take the route of least resistance, they went to the Central Africa route, and then they moved to what they call the Southern Africa route. So that is why we see South Africa becoming a transit hub for these types of drugs. And the reason for that is because we created conditions due to the criminality levels and the tolerance to crime and the failure of good governance against it. We sit with a problem that we created conditions that are extremely conducive for these big cartels to operate within South Africa with virtual impunity. So what we need to do is in the first place, and we must commend the Acting Minister. We see that he's actively looking at very good strategies in order to curb his taking from a top-scale looking at guidance.Willem Els (12:02.682)On the operational level, we're sitting with severe challenges. We've got most of the senior commissioners of police that are being arrested or suspended or so on. So we've got a power vacuum there and so on. But what we saw is with the appointment of General Mkhwanazi to head the Organided Crime Desk, we think that there might be some improvement now. But what we see, you know, when you look at this, it's not something that was created over the past four five years. It came a long way. It came along with a huge disinvestment into the capability of intelligence and the police in order to curb these crimes. Because the better they are, the more difficult it is for these cartels that are being protected to operate in South Africa. So what we need to do, we need to look at the strategy, then we need to come up with a very good operational plan, including every role player.The police cannot do it alone. You know, when it comes to drugs, your drivers for drugs, why is it so prominent in the Western Cape, for instance, the socioeconomic, all those things? The police cannot fix that. So we need to look at all of society, all of the departmental approach in order to work on a strategy and operational plan. But what we saw, and I think that is maybe one of the biggest challenges is the severe disinvestment in your capability in the police, intelligence-wise, as well as operational. We do not have boots on the ground. We do not have sufficient equipment and infrastructure to do that. They have to really look at that. And then thirdly, we need to look at the mentorship program. You sit with a lot of people. The more experienced people, we saw the people in the Madlanga Commission that came over good, the ones that care, the ones that make a difference. We need to support them. But those guys won't be here forever. We need to bring in the mentorship programme under them. What is going to happen the day that they leave and they retire and so on? So it must be a short, a medium and a long term plan that we need, that we have, but we have to start with the infrastructure and investing in this capability.Chris Steyn (14:26.345)Mm. Willem, when will the paper on your study be ready for public release?Willem Els (14:32.99)Okay, yeah, we do what they call, refer to it as an ISS Today, it's an opinion piece that is evidence-based, and we release one per day from the ISS. So we've been informed today, but by Tuesday, Wednesday, next week, they would like to have a look to publish this one.Chris Steyn (14:54.765)Okay. Anything in that report or in that paper that you would like to add to our interview today?Willem Els (15:03.638)Yeah, I think what is important is, you know, we cannot blame the police alone. You know, the mandate to curb this, investigate, to prevent is given to the police. But it's an impossible mandate. The police cannot fix all the problems of society. So we need to take hands.And I think that is where the minister really came in with his approach where he's including on a provincial level, he's looking at all the different role players in order to make sure that all of them can contribute. Because at the end of the day, it's our children. Our children are the targets and it's their future that is now in our hands.Chris Steyn (15:46.625)Thank you. That was Willem Els of the Institute for Security Studies speaking to me, Chris Steyn at Biz News. Thank you, Willem.Willem Els (15:55.881)Thank you, Chris.