Seven foreign nationals linked to a drug syndicate were found guilty last week and sentenced at the Port Shepstone Regional Court.
Six men were sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment, half of which were suspended. The other was sentenced to eight years, of which five were suspended.
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This is because he was stabbed 13 times by three prisoners while detained on this charge. It is suspected that the syndicate wanted him killed because of his refusal to plead guilty, thus exculpating the two Indian men who had recruited him.
The case dates back to May 2015, when seven foreign nationals together with three other men, were arrested by police at a house in Ramsgate. Police seized about R7-million worth of heroin.
In the lounge of the house, officers found various working stations which had been set up at tables, complete with heat sealers, scissors, tiles, digital scales and drinking straws. While reading out his judgement, Regional Magistrate Johann Bester said it was evident the straws were being cut into sections, filled with a brown powder and sealed. The powder was found to be diacetylmorphine, commonly known as heroin. The house turned out to be a heroin manufacturing or packaging facility.
Two South African men, Duran Budhai and Wesley Shunmugan pleaded guilty to the charge of unlawfully dealing in heroin and were, in terms of a plea agreement with the state, sentenced to terms of imprisonment.
One of the Zimbabwean nationals, Devine Mathura was later released when the state withdrew charges against him.
The seven jobseekers, from Malawi and Zimbabwe, where there is virtually no work at all, had been recruited by a Durban drug syndicate.
In their desperate search for piece-work, they had been easy targets to do the syndicate’s dirty work of packaging drugs.
All of them are to be repatriated to their countries of origin but the court declined the defence request that they be given suspended sentences and be repatriated immediately.
“It was considered important to impose deterrent sentences, even for the small fry, because they are nevertheless important cogs in the evil machinery of drug trafficking and it is necessary to make it clear to others that they will be jailed for playing a part in the syndicates.”
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They have spent three years in custody already.
The court regarded drug trafficking to be in the same heinous crime category as human trafficking and trafficking in the parts of protected animals.
Their mitigating circumstances had to give way to the demands for deterrence and retribution.
“Drug trafficking is downright evil because it destroys lives and encourages crime,” added Mr Bester.
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