ROLLING IN IT
Dagga farming provides a vital source of income amid grinding poverty
How dagga is creating high earners in Swaziland
In Swaziland, the police are stupid . . . In SA, if you have money, there’s no problem
FOR many Swazis, the dagga trade can mean the difference between life and death.
Poverty reaches new lows in the tiny landlocked country. The average Swazi will live to only 48 and 29% of children under five are stunted. According to US think-tank Freedom House, 66% of Swazis are unable to meet their basic food needs.
Dagga makes a difference. The powerful local variant of the drug is legendary among users in Europe and the US, to where it has been smuggled for decades. In the past few years, insiders say, growing, harvesting and selling of the plant have become more organised and farmers have consolidated to set up semiformal operations.
About 40km off the main road in a corner of the country lives Mandla, who, by his own reckoning — and reputation — manages one of the biggest dagga operations in Swaziland. He says he owns four of his own fields of about 4ha each (“I invest in property”) and buys the harvested and dried dagga from about 20 other farmers in the area.
He is tall and wide with an impressive gut that hangs over his lowslung jeans. He is the unmistakable mnumzane (important man) in the area, a Swazi Marlon Brando complete with a steady gaze and lowtoned, laconic speech.
He says he gets about R1 500 a kilogram and sells up to 200kg at each of the three annual harvests. His net income in a year reaches close to R1-million, an unheard of fortune in that part of the world.
The operation has a few of the hallmarks of the cocaine trade in South America: there are guns, secret rendezvous and police on the payroll.
Mandla says his crops are protected day and night by armed guards until they are harvested.
“We use guns in the field. There are many stealing here.” But gratuitous violence is not part of this picture: “No, we never shoot someone. They fire up [into the sky].”
During the harvest, “many, many” people are employed to pick the plants and remove the tiny leaves from the dense flowers.
Siboniswa, my guide, says the owners of craft businesses around Swaziland that rely on the tourist trade complain that their workers disappear for days during the harvesting season. But it is easy to understand why they would take the risk.
In the most rural parts of the kingdom, where there is little or no formal economy and people live with no water or electricity, the crop has incalculable knock-on effects.
The money earned during harvesting season helps to send children to school and buys clothes, groceries and even a few luxuries. It also helps to stock the spaza shops and buy the ingredients to make umqombothi, the local beer that forms the basis for micro industries in the country’s most rural parts.
“There are some jobs, but the money is too small,” says Portia, a young woman sweeping the earth yard among bony dogs and a group of giggling children. They are lucky — at least they have an adult to look after them.
Because of its massive HIV rate — the highest in the world — Swaziland has an estimated 200 000 orphans and vulnerable children.
Aids has savaged families, leaving orphans to be cared for by relatives who are themselves struggling to survive.
Most of the people on the rutted dirt roads are dressed in rags. Whenever the deep gashes in the road slow vehicles to a crawl, the car is swarmed by groups of dryskinned children, hands outstretched, giggling and calling “sweets, sweets”.
Once it is picked, the crop is dried in the shade for four days before being carried over rivers and through forests to the notoriously porous border fence with South Africa.
Here Mandla’s “many strong boys” who do the legwork are met by a car — one of Mandla’s — and the bags are taken to Johannesburg. Mandla says that once there, the dagga is delivered to a group of old friends, who pack it up and ship it out of the country to Europe and the US.
What about the police? “In Swaziland, the police are stupid. They don’t want money. In South Africa, if you have money, there’s no problem.” Mandla says his drivers never do the trip to Johannesburg with less than R15 000 in cash to pay their way out of any trouble with the authorities. But it is a different story in Swaziland, where the police are renowned for being virtually incorruptible.
The smaller farmers typically work in groups of four. If any one of them is arrested, their bail — which can be in excess of R4 000 — will be paid by their partners by the following day.
Mandla covers the bail for his own “people”. “Of course. I can’t leave them,” he says.
He says he has been caught many times — but he has a top lawyer on his payroll and so far he is still a free man.
The trade might be formalising, but dagga is not something many Swazis admit to using. Mandla scoffs at the suggestion. “I never smoke,” he says. When pressed, a few of the young men say they smoke insangu (hemp). But, given the choice, they would take a beer any day.