2,500 hectares of marijuana destroyed in early-2002 Hhohho raids
Swazi police, with South African police helicopters locating the fields, destroyed 2,500 hectares of marijuana in the northern Hhohho region in raids early in 2002. Growers fled as defoliants were sprayed, and Mbabane street prices rose 40 percent on the reduced crop.
Swazi police destroyed 2,500 hectares of marijuana fields in the mountainous
northern Hhohho region in a series of raids early in 2002.[1][2]South
African police helicopters identified the fields, and Swazi police sprayed the
plants with defoliants while the cultivators fled to the hills.[1][2]
Police said the eradication drive was at its most successful yet, helped by new
roads from the Maguga Dam construction reaching previously inaccessible
growing areas where South African drug lords had secured supplies.[1]A year
later Swaziland claimed that cooperation with South African police had let it
destroy half of the crop, though cultivation continued.[3]
The Times of Swaziland reported that rains after some raids washed the
chemicals off the plants and killed competing weeds instead, and that the
financiers’ agents taught farmers how to wash the plants clean.[1]Police
Superintendent Jerome Ndlangamandla gauged the destroyed share of the crop by
a 40 percent local price rise: a matchbox of insangu cost E10 (about US$1), a
compressed block E500 (about US$50), and 25 kilos E1,500 (about US$150).[1]
Case data
Every number and detail the sources state, with the sources that state it.
The sources date the raids only to "the beginning of the year", so the report uses the 17 May 2002 IRIN feature as the incident date with approximate precision.
No arrests, charges or court outcomes were reported; the cultivators fled to the hills during the operation.
The News from Africa account, published in July 2004, recounts the same early-2002 operation without saying whether later operations changed the picture.
On 28 October 2025 the Royal Eswatini Police Service destroyed three hectares of illegal dagga fields and large quantities of harvested dagga in the Nhlambane area of Sihhoye, along the Nkomanzi River, as part of Operation Thunder. No arrests were reported.
The Eswatini Cannabis Association demanded an immediate halt to aerial and drone spraying of cannabis fields with herbicides, alleging paraquat, glyphosate and dicamba use without environmental assessment or registered applicators. Police continued Operation Thunder, destroying fields and seizing hundreds of kilograms.
The Royal Swaziland Police Department said an ongoing operation destroys cannabis grown for commercial sale, and that marijuana valued at nearly $1 million was burned in a recent operation. Cultivation is concentrated in remote, hard-to-reach areas where families such as 75-year-old Gogo Thwala's grow small plots of dagga to buy food.
Swazi anti-drug police reported seizing 2,407 kg of compressed cannabis and destroying 356.5 hectares of plantations in the first seven months of 2006. A search-and-destroy patrol in the northern Hhohho region found hundreds of tall dagga plants but no growers, as foot patrols with weed killer replaced withdrawn South African air support.
