R200 million cocaine theft no surprise, so how can we trust our cops?

Brazen attacks on South African justice and law enforcement establishments have become so common that experts aren’t even surprised by the recent theft of R200m worth of drugs from the Hawks offices in Port Shepstone, KwaZulu-Natal.

On Monday South Africans woke up to the shocking news of the theft of 541kg of cocaine, which had been intercepted and seized from the Isipingo container depot in June.

This incident is just the latest in a string of robberies, thefts, and attacks on police, State security, and other law enforcement facilities in the past 15 years.

A powerful syndicate at work, or an inside job?

“In SA nothing can surprise us anymore. If they are so powerful and brazen enough to break into Hawks offices and take the drugs, it is quite powerful people we are dealing with here,” Institute for Security Studies (ISS) researcher Richard Chelin said.

He said it was worth noting that cocaine is one of the most expensive drugs in the SA narcotics scene, saying obviously the risks to pull off such a heist outweighed the consequences and that the fact that it happened over the weekend raised some serious questions.

According to the Hawks, the thieves gained entry into the building by forcing open windows sometime between Friday, afternoon and 7am on Monday morning, with one of the one of the safes used to store evidence having been tampered with.

Chelin said a heist of this magnitude required some serious planning and inside information, and he questioned why the drugs were left at the offices over the weekend despite the obviously lax security.

He was baffled by the decision to leave the consignment unguarded over the weekend, asking why the drugs, considering the size and worth of the consignment, were not transported to a safe location.

“Where was the drugs confiscated in the first place? Who was it destined for? Were the people the drugs were destined for responsible? Once we know which group it was, we will understand how powerful they were and which syndicates were involved. That is quite key,” he said.

“The next step is to trace the drugs. That amount of drugs will be on the street soon enough. There must be a threat assessment of places where these goods are kept. Security needs to be reviewed as they have clearly become targets of syndicates,” Chelin suggested.

Negligence or collusion?

Anine Kriegler, researcher and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cape Town’s Centre of Criminology, said failure to adequately secure something of this value suggested serious negligence at best, collusion at worst.

She maintains that this is what happens when you take an activity and a product for which there is huge demand and you put criminals in charge of it.

“You make it highly profitable and force the police to fight a battle they can see themselves losing every day. So yes, it is related to other break-ins involving other targets in SA, but it is also something specific about drugs. It happens every day all over the world…” Kriegler said.

According to Kriegler, drug busts of this magnitude were better than going after drug users with small quantities on them.

She said this was because the big money involved here fuelled corruption and could do a lot of harm, but said it was important to note that these busts were still quite pointless.

“They take up massive law enforcement resources and they make for impressive pictures and press statements, but they don’t have a lasting effect on the quantity of drugs available on the streets. Other suppliers will almost immediately step into the gap,” Kriegler said.

Timeline of the string of some of the most brazen attacks yet

26 December 2015: Six men broke into the State Security Agency (SSA) headquarters Musanda Complex in Pretoria and used keys to steal R50 million in foreign exchange from a safe.

18 March 2017: Burglars steal 15 computers containing sensitive information about the country’s judges such as their addresses and salaries from the Office of the Chief Justice (OCJ) in Midrand, Johannesburg.

4 July 2017: Computers are stolen in a brazen break-in at the Hawks’ head office in Silverton, Pretoria.

9 July 2017: Burglars break into the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) offices in Pretoria and steal two laptops and hard drives belonging to prosecutors.

14/15 April 2018: Thieves make off with undisclosed items, including computers, after breaking into Hawks offices in Bellville, Cape Town. The intruders reportedly focused their attention on the HR, finance and supply chain departments, where confidential information was kept.

December 2019: Several buglers steal at least 19 R4 rifles from the Engineering Formation of the SA National Defence Force’s Lyttelton Tech Base.

Jan 2020: Thieves strike again at the State Security Agency’s offices in Pretoria and stole classified documents, undisclosed amount of cash in local and foreign currency and this time they also took the CCTV cameras.

• siphom@citizen.co.za