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It took Glenda, not her real name, five years to finally pluck up the courage to take her first trip to move drugs from Tanzania into SA and earn R40,000 for taking the risk.
Glenda, 46, a mother of three, from Gqeberha in the Eastern Cape, was introduced to drug trafficking in 2011 through a friend who was allegedly in the same circles with Nolubabalo Nobanda, who became infamous for being bust at a Bangkok airport with 650g of cocaine mixed with baking powder hidden in her dreadlocks in 2011. At the time Nobanda had been travelling from Brazil to Thailand.
Glenda's friend had just returned from a successful smuggling trip in Brazil when Nobanda was nabbed.
“My friend was living a lavish life in PE and I was unemployed. She detailed to me how she was making her money. She introduced me to her Nigeria handlers and I was enticed by the money, but I did not have the guts to go ahead and do it.”
With young children to feed and living under her mother's roof, Glenda finally gave in to the temptation in 2017.
Her first trip was to transport cocaine to Brazil, but the mission failed as she could not keep the drug bullets in her stomach after ingesting them. She vomited during the dry run.
“My handlers said I would not survive such a long trip and I was reassigned to go to pick up drugs in Tanzania,” she said.
“I flew to Ethiopia and then spent four to five days in Lomé [Togo] and from there I went to Ethiopia. Throughout the journey I would get video instructions. Sometimes from people I did not know, on what I'd need to do. Uber drivers that I did not book would pick me up and drop me at the next point. I ended up in a hotel in Tanzania and the drugs were strapped around my body with tape. I didn't even know what type of drugs they were.”
She used a bus to travel through Zambia to Park Station in Johannesburg where two men in police uniforms were waiting for her.
“They came to me and checked my bus ticket and booked me an Uber to a hotel in Yeoville where my big boss was waiting for me. My feet were swollen and my boss gave me my money and booked me a foot massage in Sandton.”
She said the drug mule industry was complex and often involved the police and airplane crew.
“Sometimes you'd be told that the drugs you are collecting are inside the toilet in the plane and that a cabin crew member has left a screwdriver in your seat,” she said.
Her third trip to Brazil in 2017 would be her last as she was arrested in that country with 10kg of heroine hidden under her dress.
She was sentenced to six years and 10 months, but served a year and seven months at Penitenciária Feminina de Sant'Anna in São Paulo.
“I got out because of good behaviour and certain programmes that I did which included teaching other inmates how to make Xhosa beadwork. There were lots of SA women in that prison and four of them were from the Eastern Cape. I regret what I did. I was known as a drug lord in my neighbourhood when I returned from Brazil and that stigma is still there.”
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