Subj: UK link to South Africa drug craze



Date: Monday, October 12, 1998



Source:    The Independent (UK)





UK link to South Africa drug craze

By Ian Burrell, Home Affairs Correspondent 



POLICE are investigating links between British

businessmen and chemists and a hallucinogenic

drug which is devastating South Africa's poorest

townships. 



The trade in mandrax, which has the chemical

name methaqualone, has led to vicious turf wars

and left thousands of members of the black and

coloured populations with crippling drug

dependencies. 



Evidence was provided to South Africa's Truth

and Reconciliation Commission in the summer

that the apartheid regime had stockpiled mandrax

for possible use in riot control. 



The drug causes extreme drowsiness and many

South Africans suspect that the security forces

encouraged its use in the townships as a means of

suppressing any resistance. 



But South African detectives believe that British

sources are now playing a key role in the supply

trade. 



The National Criminal Intelligence Service in

London has been informed that British business

interests are providing key ingredients for a

network of illicit laboratories in which the drug is

manufactured. 



The South African criminals have turned to Britain

for supplies of Anthranilic acid, which is not a

controlled substance in this country and is widely

used in the manufacture of dyes and perfumes. 



The acid, along with other precursor chemicals

used in mandrax production, are being shipped,

often via Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique to

the laboratories in remote parts of South Africa. 



The South African Narcotics Bureau (SANB)

claimed a major victory in their efforts to break

the supply trade when they raided a lab at a farm

on the outskirts of Lichtenburg in North-West

province two years ago. As well as seizing

enough methaqualone powder, precursor

chemicals and pressing machines to make

mandrax tablets with a street value of UKP1.5m, they

also arrested a British chemist and six other

suspected members of the drug gang. 



Sidney Frankel, 60, from London, is still being

held in a South African jail facing charges of illegal

drug manufacture and supply, and is likely to be

brought to trial next year. 



Mark Silver, of the NCIS drugs unit, said:

"Mandrax is a serious problem in South Africa.

We know that a number of British nationals have

been involved in purchasing the precursors. Often

they will set up businesses which appear to have

legitimate end users. Then the chemicals are

re-routed." 



Mandrax was first marketed in 1965 as a

sedative drug produced by the chemical company

Roussel. The pills soon became a popular drug of

abuse in Britain, marketed on the streets as

"downers" and known by the nickname

"mandies". It became a controlled drug in 1971

and was withdrawn from the British market in the

early 1980s. 



On the streets of the South African townships,

mandrax tablets are known as "buttons". Since

the early 1980s, it has been the predominant drug

in South Africa, which accounts for at least 75

per cent of the world's mandrax market. 



With the tablets passing hands for around UKP5 each

and many users taking six or seven buttons a day

- often crushed into a cannabis joint called a

"white pipe" - the trade has proved very lucrative

for some. 



One officer from the SANB in Cape Town said:

"We have got people here that have got four or

five houses, each with a value of 3m Rand

(UKP400,000) just because of the profits of

mandrax." 



With such money changing hands in environments

where well-paid jobs are scarce, gangs have

inevitably formed to carve up the market. 



In the Western Cape township of Mannenberg,

where the mandrax problem is at its worst, the

dealers have formed street-gangs like the Sexy

Boys, Terrible Josters, Americans, Mongrels and

Hard Livings. 



Exasperated by the police's failure to control the

gangs, an armed vigilante organisation, People

against Gangsterism and Drugs, began to fight

back. 



In one of a series of violent clashes, Rashaad

Staggie, the twin brother of the leader of the Hard

Livings, was attacked by armed PAGAD

members as he sat in his Nissan four-wheel drive,

two years ago. Staggie was shot in the head and

set alight with Molotov cocktails in the full glare of

television cameras.