Australian National Review – Latin American drug traffickers set up shop across Africa

JOHANNESBURG—In late July, a unit of South Africa’s elite police force, the Hawks, raided a barren farm near a town in the country’s remote northeast.

“We found an industrial-scale laboratory and 408 kilograms (about 500 pounds) of crystal meth and related chemicals, estimated to be worth two billion rand (nearly $113 million),” Col. Katlego Matlego, spokesman for the Hawks, told The Epoch Times.

It was the largest methamphetamine bust ever in South Africa, but the team that solved the case didn’t celebrate much.

“We were too busy thinking about the Mexicans we arrested,” Matlego said.

“We are fighting our own brutal gangs that murder and rape everywhere. Now we have to worry about Mexican drug cartels too.

“That’s a very dangerous sign we found on that farm.”

Three of the four arrested people were Mexican nationals.

The raid is the clearest sign yet that cartels from South and Latin America are producing massive amounts of crystal meth in South Africa, much of which is ultimately smuggled into the United States, according to crime analysts, law enforcement officials and intelligence officials who spoke to The Epoch Times.

The United Nations describes methamphetamine as a powerful and highly addictive stimulant that affects the central nervous system and produces feelings of euphoria when smoked, snorted or injected.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) warns that high doses of the substance “can lead to death from stroke, heart attack, or multi-organ problems due to overheating.”

The agency says “Mexican polydrug organizations,” including the Sinaloa, New Generation, Gulf, Juarez and Knights Templar cartels, are trafficking heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana into the United States.

Chad Thomas, a Johannesburg-based private forensic investigator who specializes in tracking the financial proceeds of crime, told The Epoch Times that Mexican cartels use South Africa as a “springboard to get meth to America, where the money is.”

Vanda Felbab-Brown, director of the Initiative on Non-State Armed Actors and co-director of the Africa Security Initiative at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, said it is primarily Mexico’s two largest criminal groups — the Sinaloa cartel and the “ultra-violent” Jalisco Nueva Generación (New Generation) cartel — that are based in Africa.

“They’re smuggling cocaine through West Africa and more recently methamphetamine through Southern Africa, where they now have several production sites,” she told The Epoch Times.

“Their competition has spread all over the world.”

Thomas said the cartels are being driven to new production and drug trafficking bases because of the “hard-line” approach in their home countries.

Since 2022, several governments in South America and Latin America, including Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador and Mexico, have launched large-scale operations against drug cartels, killing drug lords and traffickers and filling prisons with thousands of suspected gang members.

“Governments and their people are fed up with high murder rates and gang wars, so politicians have declared states of emergency and given security forces almost unlimited powers to crack down on suspected criminals,” said Amalendu Misra, professor of international politics at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom.

This approach is known as mano dura, which is Spanish for “iron fist.”

“It is about suspending the fundamental rights of citizens by giving security forces and the judiciary the power to arrest, detain and deport anyone involved in criminal gangs,” Misra said.

“It also denies access to legal measures to establish the right of the arrested person to a fair and open trial.”

At the same time, the US government, followed by governments in other parts of the US, announced strict restrictions on the sale of “precursor” chemicals used to make crystal meth, such as pseudoephedrine, a common ingredient in cold medicines.

“This means that the cartels cannot obtain the quantities of pharmaceutical chemicals needed to produce the large quantities of methamphetamine they need to supply their largest market, the United States,” Thomas said.

“So now they are looking to China for the chemicals and the South African ports are seeing a lot of Chinese traffic.”

In China, it is still legal to buy unlimited quantities of many of the pharmaceutical ingredients commonly used in methamphetamine production, he said.

“What we have now is Mexican cartels working with South African gangs and Chinese triads to smuggle the chemicals from China into South Africa with the help of corrupt customs officials,” the researcher said.

According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, South Africa is a major transit country for drugs due to its geography, international trade and transport links, advanced financial system, and developed information and communications networks.

According to Felbab-Brown, Mexican cartels began setting up bases in West Africa in the early 2000s.

“West African countries were relatively close to Brazil and Venezuela, the main transit points for cocaine trafficking to Europe,” she said.

Felbab-Brown described the Sinaloa cartel as the “pioneer in developing new drug markets and smuggling routes in far-flung places.”

She said it quickly came to dominate the cocaine trade in Africa, taking a “hands-off” approach.

“Sinaloa has local criminal groups moving the cocaine, and has only a minimal presence on the ground in Africa,” Felbab-Brown said.

Rather than orchestrating the African portion of the smuggling operation down to the last detail, the Sinaloa cartel has focused primarily on smuggling cocaine into Africa and then smuggling it from the continent’s northern coast to Europe.

Felbab-Brown said Mexican cartels now also have a “significant presence” in Central Africa, particularly in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and in Southern Africa, mainly in South Africa and its eastern neighbor, Mozambique.

Both countries have a long coastline.

“It was Sinaloa that established a beachhead in Central and Southern Africa, with an impressive prospect,” she stated.

“This was not done to smuggle cocaine, but to facilitate the smuggling of methamphetamine precursors from China to Mexico.

“The expansion of China’s trade with Africa provided a very convenient cover, as Chinese shipping containers carrying goods to Africa are used to hide the drug precursors.”

Felbab-Brown said the Mexican cartels’ presence in Central and Southern Africa, as elsewhere on the continent, is limited to a few individuals who rely on African drug traffickers to organize their activities.

She used the example of Braima Seidi Ba, a man with dual citizenship of Guinea-Bissau and Portugal, describing him as a “key African collaborator” of the Sinaloa cartel.

Ba and Ricardo Ariza Monje, a Colombian, were sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2020 after seizing 1.8 tons of cocaine hidden in bags of flour in September 2019.

Sinaloa is the most present in Africa, but remains “indirect and very quiet,” Felbab-Brown said.

Thomas added: “These Mexicans don’t get involved in local gang fights. They also give their African collaborators tremendous freedom and they don’t expect the locals to form exclusive loyalties.”

There are signs that Mexican influence in Africa is growing, Felbab-Brown said.

For example, she said, the Sinaloa cartel is becoming involved in the smuggling of migrants, including Africans trying to enter the United States through Mexico.