Free Zim birth control pills smuggled into SA and sold

Each month, Nancy and her business partner travel to Zimbabwe to stock up on Marvelon family planning pills. She smuggles them into South Africa, where she sells them for a healthy profit to other Zimbabweans who, for various reasons, don’t want the contraceptive pills dispensed in South African clinics.

Nancy’s suppliers are hospital staff in Zimbabwe’s hospitals who sell the pills to her for R5 a blister pack. Marvelon is distributed at hospitals, clinics and pharmacies through the Family Planning Council of Zimbabwe, which is supplied by the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund.

Sometimes Nancy, who chose not to use her real name, hides the pills in her clothes and luggage, but usually she pays bus drivers and crossborder taxi drivers R1 a blister pack of 28 pills to transport them for her. If she runs short of stock, she buys packets for R10 from a “wholesale” supplier in Johannesburg who also illegally imports the pills from Zimbabwe.

Nancy says she has 100 customers a month in Springs alone, and she sells the packets for R20 to bulk buyers or R30 to individuals. By contrast, online news agency GroundUp found that Marvelon tablets sold for about R130 for 28 tablets in Johannesburg pharmacies. The contraceptive Oralcon is free at public health facilities.

“We also supply people who sell in Daveyton, Tsakane, Duduza [where Nancy’s business partner operates], Nigel and Brakpan. We advertise through our Apostolic Church, which has many branches,” says Nancy.

Nancy was a teacher. She has a vegetable stall, but with two children at university and two at high school in Zimbabwe, she struggled to make ends meet. “My husband is sick and has not worked for a long time,” she says.

The contraceptives are also smuggled to Botswana and Namibia. Nancy sells mostly to Zimbabweans, but among her customers are people from Mozambique, Lesotho and Malawi.

One woman says she has been buying from Nancy for 18 months. “When I asked for the pills I used to use in Zimbabwe at the local clinic in KwaThema, they said they do not have them,” she says.

Another customer says: “A nurse told me to go to Zimbabwe if I want those pills, because they do not have them. I can’t go to Zimbabwe just for contraceptives. They gave me other pills. I did not like them very much, because I had used the other type for a long time. I then decided to buy the ones they bring from Zimbabwe.”

Other women said they bought from Nancy to avoid the long queues at clinics and said the local pills were “low grade”.

Oralcon pills are fine, but people often suffer minor side effects when they switch to new drugs. — GroundUp