South Africa: Cheap Tik Takes Hold in Tshwane Townships

An uptick in psychosis has followed

Up until 2019, north Tshwane townships such as Soshanguve, Mabopane and Winterveld had been less affected by crystal meth than many other areas in the country. Meth has since exploded in the region. Clinical staff say there has been an uptick in meth-induced psychosis. Drug dealers are selling meth for as little as R10. South Africa’s meth is imported from Nigeria and Afghanistan, and some is also manufactured locally.

At the back of a field in a north Tshwane township, Siphiwe* sits on a red plastic chair, chewing a matchstick. Two small trees stand on either side of him, holding up shade cloth. Below him, men sit on the grass, needles hanging from their necks.

Siphiwe tells GroundUp that he has been selling drugs since he was ten. At first he sold weed, but the 25-year old primarily deals nyaope (heroin) these days. He buys it from Nigerian suppliers in Pretoria for R21 a bag and sells it to his customers for R30. People typically inject about three to six of these doses a day.

Heroin/nyaope has been popular in Tshwane’s northern townships for over 20 years. But Siphiwe says a new product has taken hold in recent years – crystal meth.

In the Western Cape, meth has been one of the most popular illicit drugs since at least the mid-2000s, where it’s known as tik. It became popular in the Eastern Cape from about 2010. But in north Tshwane townships, such as Ga-Rankuwa, Winterveld, Mabopane and Soshanguve, the widespread emergence of meth is more recent.

Dealers and users in the region told GroundUp that the drug (known locally as crystal) hit the streets around 2019. Its popularity quickly surged, noticed by health workers from 2022.

Siphiwe and his partners buy rocks of meth, roughly the size of fists, from Tanzanian suppliers based in Pretoria. He then crushes these up and repackages them in small see-through baggies. Packs go for R50, R30 and even R10. The tiny R10 dose provides a single shot.

Most people who use drugs in northern Tshwane told GroundUp that rather than smoking crystal from a glass pipe, they usually dissolve it in water, and then inject it. In some cases, people combine nyaope and crystal in a single shot, known as “motswake” (Sesotho for a mixture) or a “bomb” (also the name used in cities like Durban).

Crystal fuelled days of sleepless hustling

Tshepo is one of the customers who sits needle in neck on the grass next to Siphiwe. GroundUp had spoken to him earlier that day at a scrap yard, where he sat peeling copper from a small pipe. He and his friend, Mpho, told GroundUp that they have been using nyaope since about 2013.

To finance this, they spend their days at dumping sites, collecting and selling scrap.

“We pick up all those things that are recyclable,” says Mpho. “We start in the morning from seven o’clock, and we [finish] at around 11. After that, I go again from 12 o’clock to three o’clock … During the day I recycle maybe three times.”

With each round of scrap collection, Tshepo and Mpho earn a bit of cash to buy nyaope from Siphiwe, a few hundred metres from the scrapyard. But the cycle requires a continuous hustle; heroin withdrawal can occur within hours of the last hit. Taking a day out isn’t an option.

The lifestyle leaves users exhausted. But crystal offers an “antidote”. While nyaope is a “downer”, meth is a stimulant, says Mpho, and can keep a person energised and able to continue working. It’s one of the reasons that he has been using the drug regularly since 2022.

It’s a common trajectory. GroundUp spoke to numerous people who use drugs in northern Tshwane. Most have been taking nyaope for ten to 20 years, only adding crystal meth to their daily drug diet sometime in the 2020s. The drug allows them to stay awake and alert, they say, but it can also cause more pernicious effects.

Meth-induced psychosis – “tormenting spirits”‘

Psychosis, in which people can’t distinguish between events that are real and those that aren’t, has been one of the most concerning impacts of northern Tshwane’s crystal meth explosion, according to clinical staff at the Community Oriented Substance Use Program (COSUP). This is a harm reduction organisation which helps people who use drugs across Tshwane.

“Sometimes the psychosis is acute, and after some [time] it gets resolved,” says Bongeka Dyante, a clinical associate at COSUP, “but other people go through psychosis and just never come back”.

At the scrapyard, Mpho explains that crystal “can show you some things which are not happening”.

“When I see a person walk by, maybe he looks at me, I will think that he’s talking about me. Maybe he wants to come and beat me, but that person is just walking,” he says.

Clinical staff at a COSUP centre in Soshanguve, Block V, say that from about 2021 they began seeing an increasing number of clients exhibiting strange behaviour. Only later did they realise this was linked to a growing meth problem.

Yvonne Mashego, a social worker at the site, says, “Sometimes a client would come here running, showing signs of psychosis. They’ll be hallucinating; they’ll be [talking about] things that are not there”.

In the predominantly coloured township of Eersterust, near Pretoria, 50 kilometers south of Soshanguve, a former crystal meth user, explains what these hallucinations can feel like: “You don’t sleep. You’re overthinking … You start hearing voices”. He says people often refer to these voices as “tormenting spirits”.

“Why I [call it] tormenting spirits is because that spirit is using someone else’s voice – that voice is maybe my mom’s voice. Now, I hear my mom: ‘Someone is in the house, go there’. Or I hear his voice,” he pointed to his friend. “When I come out of my home, I’m angry with him ‘cos that spirit was tormenting me with his voice.”

In Eersterust, meth has been popular for longer than in the north, for roughly ten years, according to users. The cheapest meth dose appears to be R30, rather than R10. Here too, clinical staff at the Eersterust COSUP clinic told GroundUp that meth-induced psychosis has been one of their most pressing challenges. Hearing voices is a common manifestation. Uncontrolled aggression is another.

Where is South Africa’s meth coming from?

Historically, much of South Africa’s crystal meth was manufactured locally: Western Cape gangs would get the chemical precursors used to make meth from Chinese syndicates. In return the gangs provided poached abalone – a delicacy in Hong Kong.

A report by the Global Initiative found that imported meth has supplied a larger share of the market over time. Suppliers include Nigeria, where industrial meth labs began blossoming in around 2016, as well as Afghanistan, which began to supply meth to South Africa from about 2019.

GroundUp spoke to several active and former meth dealers in northern Tshwane. A prominent dealer told GroundUp that he is personally aware of a rural plot in Randfontein (in the West Rand) where a criminal group cooks both crystal meth and methcathinone, commonly known as cat. Cooking meth in urban settings isn’t typically viable, he says, due to the potent smell.

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Three days after this interview took place, police published a statement saying that they had busted a meth lab in Rietfontein, which is also in the West Rand, roughly 25km from Randfontein.

Mexican groupings appear to be playing a role in local manufacturing operations. In the Rietfontein bust, a Mexican national was apprehended. Two Mexican nationals were also arrested in a separate incident in July last year, when police raided a meth lab in Limpopo. In Nigeria, the industrial meth labs that emerged from 2016 were allegedly developed in collaboration with a Mexican cartel.

The rise of the Forum

Most dealers in northern Tshwane told GroundUp that they buy meth from Nigerian or Tanzanian suppliers in the central Pretoria suburb of Sunnyside, before driving it back up north. In some cases, suppliers deliver it to them directly, or meet them halfway.

One told GroundUp that he would typically buy about ten grams worth of meth in Sunnyside for R800, and then sell it in the north for about R3,800.

In the last year, a new heavily armed gang, known as the Forum, has been changing these arrangements in at least one township.

The dealer explained: “These guys [the Forum], they come to you if they know that you are selling [crystal or nyaope]. They say, ‘Stop stocking from the Nigerians, we’re going to bring it to you.”‘

The Forum now buys from the Nigerian groups, and local dealers are forced to buy from them.

Sitting next to the dealer, an associate says, “If they come to you and they find you are [directly] stocking from the Nigerians, that will be a huge problem. They don’t play; they kill you.”

GroundUp has changed the names of all dealers quoted in this article at their request. We were also asked not to name the exact locations of these interviews.

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