Police raided the couple’s shacks across the Swapo informal settlement in Copesville, near Pietermaritzburg, in the early hours of Friday 23 August 2013.[1] A husband and wife from Lesotho, described by police as among the country’s biggest dagga smugglers, were arrested with four alleged drug runners, six people in all.[1] The six arrested were all believed to be from Lesotho and were alleged to have received the drugs from a family in the mountain kingdom.[1]

The arrests followed a six-month covert operation in which undercover agents bought dagga.[1] More than 50 officers from Pietermaritzburg and provincial crime intelligence, the cluster drug team and the Hawks, with K9 and tactical response units, moved in with 30 vehicles.[1] Police seized drugs with a street value of about R350,000 as well as thousands of rand in cash, and found a makeshift packaging lab with money in enamel dishes.[1] An introductory caption put the seizure at R300,000 of dagga and other drugs.[1]

A police source said the dagga was compressed into 3 kg balls that sold for R350 each.[1] The same source said the dagga was carried on horses and donkeys through the Lesotho mountains, across the border to Underberg, and then trucked to Pietermaritzburg.[1] Police spokeswoman Lieutenant Joey Jeevan confirmed the dagga was trafficked into KwaZulu-Natal from Lesotho.[1] Jeevan said the couple were bringing in tons of dagga a month and that investigators were still quantifying the amounts, calling it multi-millions.[1]

The couple, who police believed had operated in the province for more than 10 years, and the four runners were expected in the Pietermaritzburg Magistrate’s Court on Monday 26 August on multiple charges of dealing in dagga.[1] KwaZulu-Natal police commissioner Lieutenant-General Mammonye Ngobeni said Copesville was one of the areas police were focusing on and that they would not loosen their grip on drug dealers.[1]