No longer a transit drug, heroin is now entrenched in some African cities: report

Johannesburg has become South Africa’s logistical epicentre for the heroin trade, both domestic and for transit, a new report has revealed.

While the "Southern Route" has primarily been described as a transit route for heroin to overseas markets, local markets for the drug in southern Africa are now larger than official discourse acknowledges.

"Almost all heroin entering South Africa goes first to Johannesburg, where networks either divide or consolidate, repackage or ship on to exit points, often using the city’s inland port, City Deep, or bussing shipments via the N1 to Cape Town," states the report conducted by Simone Haysom, a senior analyst at Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime.

"Johannesburg feeds Durban’s market, as well as the towns on the highveld, which have developed significant nyaope-smoking populations.

The report - titled "From the Maskani to the Mayor: The Political Economy of Heroin Markets in East and Southern Africa" - states Africa’s east coast was for decades a secondary route for the international heroin trade.

However, it said heroin then began to leak into African markets and a significant amount is now traded and consumed locally - with devastating impact.

The study said the United Nations estimates that 20 to 40 tons of heroin enter Africa annually, but the actual amount may be much higher. Accurate figures are hard to determine.

It cites as an example a 2017 bust of almost a ton of heroin, which was found hidden in boxes of wine on a farm in the Overberg region of the Western Cape.

"The bust took local authorities by surprise. Until then, the centrality of South Africa in the Southern Route – a network of routes taking Afghan heroin south across the Indian Ocean and through Africa en route to other markets – had gone largely unnoticed."

The report charts the growth of the heroin trade in Durban, Cape Town and Johannesburg. It said the explosion of South Africa’s heroin market was relatively recent - with major surges in use happening in around 2005, 2010 and 2015 - but now that it has taken hold, it commands a powerful grip on drug markets across the country.

It said the heroin market appeared to have had its earliest origins in SA in intertwined processes of illegal migration and dysfunctional urbanisation in the 1990s.

The report said despite the risk to public health that injecting drug use presents, SA's state response to the heroin epidemic was weak in many respects.

"There is no reliable national survey on the number of heroin users or their modalities of use, meaning the state lacks the basic data needed to mount a nationwide response."

There were also very few health services specifically designed for the needs of the heroin users, it added.

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