For two decades, South Africa “imported” its methamphetamine. But since July 2024, police have uncovered four industrial-scale laboratories on remote farms, staffed by Mexican cartel chemists, with drugs worth more than R3.5 billion seized.
Mexican cartel chemists are now being sent directly to South Africa, reflecting a deliberate strategy of moving drug production closer to consumers rather than importing the drugs. Researchers trace the model back to roughly 2016 in Nigeria, then spreading through East Africa, Mozambique, and Botswana, before landing in South Africa in the last two to three years.
South Africa’s methamphetamine problem is not new. The drug, known locally as tik, first entered South Africa through the Western Cape in the late 1990s, when Chinese crime syndicates began bartering precursor chemicals with Cape gangs in exchange for poached abalone. As late as 2003, methamphetamine was virtually unknown in Western Cape. Within five years, it had become the city’s main drug. The graph below shows the growth of meth use in the Western Cape since 2000.
Research published in 2018 showed the prevalence of meth usage in two South African cities. Wastewater flowing into treatment plants in 26 cities around the world including Cape Town and the East Rand in Gauteng was tested. That test measured the concentration of methamphetamine in the sewage, then extrapolated that data into the likely amount of meth consumed per 1 000 people per day. Cape Town ranked first, at 929.9 milligrams of meth consumed per 1 000 inhabitants per day. The East Rand ranked sixth. The results are shown in the graph below.
Since the late 1990s, either the finished drug or the chemicals needed to produce it in small, kitchen-scale batches were manufactured abroad and smuggled into South Africa. The discovery of Mexican nationals at industrial-scale meth laboratories over the past two years in South Africa marks a shift in that pattern.
In July 2024 the Hawks raided a farm near Groblersdal in Limpopo and discovered an industrial-scale laboratory containing meth worth an estimated R2 billion. Two Mexican nationals were among those arrested.
Later that year, authorities found a smaller laboratory near Tshwane in Gauteng containing drugs and equipment valued at roughly R100 million. In September 2025, police raided a farm near Volksrust in Mpumalanga, seized drugs worth an estimated R350 million, and arrested five Mexican nationals.
Then, in May 2026, police uncovered the largest operation yet on a farm outside Swartruggens in North West. Officers seized 481 kilograms of methamphetamine and dismantled a laboratory valued at more than R1 billion. Eleven people were arrested, including Mexican, Mozambican, and Zimbabwean nationals, as well as South Africans.
Across Africa, established Nigerian criminal syndicates are believed to broker relationships between continent-wide trafficking groups and Mexican methamphetamine experts through a referral system. African partners provide discreet production sites, local knowledge, logistics, and protection networks in exchange for the technical expertise needed to establish and operate industrial laboratories.
The scale of Mexican involvement is becoming increasingly clear. Mexican drug chemists were found at 11 of 12 clandestine drug laboratories raided in Africa over the past two years, according to testimony given to the American Senate Armed Services Committee by the head of United States Africa Command General Dagvin Anderson.
