Guns, goats and ganja

I've also been disturbed at Keith Bush Camp, amongst other places. It does put a damper on things! Somehow we have to come to terms with it, and something has to be done to at least slow things down significantly. I'm not going to give up the Drakensberg to the smugglers.

I've also wondered where exactly all the dagga is grown and how it is organised in Lesotho. I know that most of the smugglers that are arrested in the Berg claim to be from Mokhotlong. It's easy to see how the Mokhotlong area can feed the main areas of the Berg via the valleys. The Senqu provides quick access to all passes of the Mweni, the Tlanyaku leads to the Organ Pipes/Tlanyaku Passes (which is among the most significant smuggling corridors in the Berg), the Moremoholo leads to Gray's Pass, the Sanqebethu leads to Langalibalele and Judge Passes, and the Mokhotlong valley takes one straight to the Lotheni/Vergelegen passes such as Hlatimba South, Mlahlangubo and Mkhomazi. And all of these valleys converge around Mokhotlong.

I also know of kraals a few kilometres in from the escarpment that seem to serve as a type of depot - this is my theory anyway. Once can come across huge amounts of dagga and encounter many smugglers there. They rest there during the day and get ready to descend the passes late afternoon.

My understanding is that a lot of the stuff for the Berg is moved on foot and on donkeys (as is evident by the infamous donkey trains of the Mweni!). The smugglers cover long distances on foot, often at night and can do around 2 runs per month. They apparently get around R1500 per bag that they carry.

The stuff is grown right across Lesotho, though I have seen references that indicate that the Berea district is pretty significant, which is the area west of Khatse Dam and north of Maseru. I'm not sure that this area significantly supplies the Berg syndicates though because it lies much closer to the borders along the Free State. Smuggling takes places across all of Lesotho’s borders.

I include at the end here a very enlightening report released several months ago by the Institute for Security Studies. Some of the details are pretty amusing!

Dagga cultivation in Lesotho

The cultivation of dagga is common across the whole of Lesotho. However, the hub of this activity is the Beria District, which shares an administrative boundary with Maseru in the east. Cultivation predominantly takes place in the mountains, away from law enforcement and where access is generally restricted to those with four-wheel drive vehicles or traditional transport by donkey or horse. A typical method is to mix the plantation of the dagga with other crops, especially mielies. The idea is to create an opportunity to dispute the accusation of wilful cultivation of the dagga by claiming that it actually grows as weed in the fields. The farmers also claim that since the weed is not harmful to their crop in any way, they have no reason to be alarmed by it and therefore they just leave it!

In other instances, farmers may have plantations exclusively of dagga up in the mountains. Access in such instances would strictly be by donkey/horse or on foot. The conditions are such that it is virtually impossible for law enforcement to either reach these places, or, where they can reach them, to be able to effect arrests or to get information from anybody at all. The villagers are skilled at identifying strangers from a long distance. They know each other and all the vehicles in their neighbourhood, so they can easily identify strange vehicles. At night, they claim to be able to immediately tell by the lights and the revs of approaching vehicles that they are either government vehicles or that they do not belong to the villagers. Once it has been established that there are intruders in the neighbourhood, all the adults immediately leave for the mountains. By the time the visitors (be they law enforcement or other strangers) arrive at the homesteads, they will only find the old and frail and the young children. The children claim absolute ignorance (efforts are made to keep them ignorant) and the old ones fein forgetfulness or lack of sight or deafness, and thus no knowledge of where everybody has gone.

The dagga season runs from December/January to March/April. At the end of the season, farmers harvest their yield and transport it from the fields to storage facilities at home, the same way they would do with any grain. The practice is to stack bags of the harvest on donkeys’ back for transporting back to the homestead. The animals are trained and may be spotted walking unaccompanied between the fields and the homes, making it impossible to arrest people red-handed in the process of transporting the drug. In is then impossible At the homestead, the dagga is stored in bags that are from the same as those storing other grains. The bags are sealed and occasionally mixed with those of other grains, and, if not opened, can only be identified by the skilled eye of the owners.

Agents known to the villagers do the dagga trafficking. They act as go-betweens connecting the villagers to the South African market. They are responsible for purchasing the dagga from the villagers and transporting it to strategic locations in the mountainous borders with RSA, either using animals or four-wheel drive vehicles. The agents, together with their accomplices, then smuggle the dagga into South Africa through illegal transit points. Trucks take the aggregated harvest and drop it at specific points along the border on the Lesotho side. The same trucks drive empty through official entry posts before driving to opposite positions on the South African side, where the dagga is loaded and taken away.

Jackson Madzima, Researcher, Organised Crime and Money Laundering Programme

Read the original report here .

Adaption is critical. And awareness and prevention are a major drive of this site.

Solutions to the smuggling problem seem hopeless a lot of the time. Cross-border issues are not a new problem either in the Berg - it's been happening for well over 100 years. And dagga has been grown in Lesotho since the 16th century according to one reference I came across.

I still somehow like to belive that a difference can be made. How exactly, I'm not always sure. Certainly it's not the place of mountaineers and hikers to confront the smugglers. But I do believe the current levels of security problems in the Berg are not acceptable and could be slowed down.

This site continues to be a welcome home for fans of the Drakensberg who wish to vent their frustration about the situation. Let your voice be heard.

It seems to be no secret that some of the local police are involved or paid off. Stories abound.

The spraying of dagga still takes place (Cathedral Peak got done in Feb this year). Two choppers go out - one does the spraying, the other is armed against possible attack from the ground. Not sure if spraying takes place in Lesotho, but there is co-operation between the police of both countries and raids are done together.

From the contact I've had with some of the KZN Wildlife people in the Northern and Central Berg, I have the impression that they take the problem very seriously and do what they can given contraints that are on them. They now have to undergo combat training, chase after smugglers (and get shot at) in addition to simply managing the park. There are regular armed patrols out there, particularly around The Neck and Phillips Folly at Cathedral Peak (and if one is heading that way it would be wise to check if they are doing that and rather stay clear). In co-operation with a special Border Police unit they do have some success stories in curbing the smugglers and even getting them prosecuted. The situation remains difficult to get under control.

mnt_tiska wrote:

It might be pragmatic to have a few main passes earmarked as transit routes - some kind of sacrificial anode. Ntonjelane Pass served this purpose for several decades until the 1990s.

In a way it would be great if it could be limited to a few passes, though it would seem semi-tolerated then too. The top of Ntonjelana now falls under the uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park / World Heritage Site, so there's another complication.

Of course the fact that dagga is illegal and that Lesotho is an independent country is a big aggravating factor, but that's beyond the scope of this forum .