A South African Police Service briefing to parliament listed a May 2001 cannabis eradication operation in Swaziland covering 108 hectares, valued at R7.5 million. South African helicopters regularly helped locate Swazi plantations in this period.
🇸🇿 Eswatini
A South African Police Service briefing to parliament’s safety and security committees on 30 May 2001 listed a cannabis eradication operation in Swaziland that month, covering 108 hectares valued at R7.5 million.[1]
Most Swazi cannabis was grown in the north of the country, which is steep and hilly and not easily accessible by road, and joint operations with South African helicopter support located plantations there for destruction.[2]
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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northern Hhohho region found hundreds of tall dagga plants but no growers, as foot patrols with weed killer replaced withdrawn South African air support.