SARS reveals sobering statistics on drugs and illegal goods coming to, or through, SA
The South African Revenue Service (SARS) said on Friday that customs officials at Johannesburg’s OR Tambo International Airport confiscated 108kg of drugs this week, which were hidden in boxes and declared as "calcium carbonate". It was just one bust in what appears to have been a particularly busy month, pointing to increasing attempts to smuggle drugs into SA. Last year, drugs worth R2.3bn were confiscated in the country. SARS said that, on inspecting the boxes in the cargo section at the airport after they arrived from Kenya on Tuesday, officials discovered a white powdery substance and a brown sand-like substance, which they sent to a private laboratory for testing. The results came back positive for the drug ketamine (the white powdery substance) and acetylanthranil‚ a base ingredient for methaqualone (Mandrax). The case has been handed over to the Hawks for further investigation. In another incident‚ a truck leaving Lesotho was stopped on Thursday at the Ficksburg border post ...
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