UPS STELLIANOS: I've seen lots of drugs in my life. I've met many drug dealers big and small. I've come across lots and lots of addicts. But there is one incident that I most probably will never forget in my life. It was on a Saturday morning and I landed up in a white Portuguese lady's house. The drug house is part of little Colombia; it’s basically a flat on the second floor. You go up very dirty stirs and finally when you can get in it’s a very dirty place. Its very run down, very smelly. And while filming her dealings in the house and her addicts in the house, a white man and a black lady which are married they are married people they walked. And his name was Carlos and her name was Dedinia. She was sitting on a 20-liter oil drum and he was sitting on a bed. It was like I wasn’t there I didn’t exist. Although I had turned the camera by them. By their action I saw that they were really in need of a shot of heroin. They were sort of impatient; he had the syringes in his pocket which he took out. They used a little bit of water to rinse the syringes. Then they cooked a little bit of heroin with pure water in a spoon. They were husband and wife, very dear husband and wife. I felt very sorry for them. The fact that their bodies are so worn out and they are in such a bad condition it was a horrific experience for myself. Carlos is a veteran surgeon and she used to work for the UN, so they are very educated people.
Fade to title: Mainline a heroin traffic route.
V/O 1: Alex Stellianos is a man on a mission… to expose an international drug route… a narcotic corridor through which vast amounts of drugs are smuggled… especially heroin from Pakistan and Afghanistan into eastern and southern Africa.
UPS STELLIANOS: I've got a vendetta against drugs all these years I have tried to make a difference but obviously one person cant make a difference. But I hate drugs.
V/O 2: Stellianos has vast experience in the underworld of drugs. First as an agent for the South African Narcotics Bureau. Then from 1995 until 2000, for the American Drug Enforcement Administration. He was registered as an agent in South America, Asia and the Caribbean where he infiltrated cocaine syndicates.
UPS STELLIANOS: These people are bandits, they are syndicates of crime. If they ever suspect you and they find you they will kill you.
V/O 3: Three years ago, Stellianos was on assignment in Maputo Mozambique to bust a mandrax factory in. It was then he discovered something even more sinister: a suburb known as "Little Colombia".
UPS STELLIANOS: Little Columbia is part of a military zone I would estimate 60 year old military houses in a surburb and heroin is available in each and every one of those 60 houses in the surburb. Kids get born there kids grow up in little Columbia. In other words his childhood and his teenage hood period he grows up with drugs what is his future. He's either a addict or a drug dealer. That was the worst part of little Columbia. I saw lots and lots of drugs. I saw cocaine, I saw heroin. I saw lots of sick people in Little Columbia…I saw lots of drugs.
V/O 4: Stellianos also discovered a heroine route from Mozambique to South Africa. He was told that the drugs originate in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
UPS STELLIANOS: I tried to tell Organised Crime I tried to tell different police officers about the heroin route, nobody listened.
V/O 5: Three years later, and heroin abuse is on the increase in South Africa.
UPS GARY LEWIS: Our concern is that its growing and if you ask me how much I don’t know but especially in the past two years we have seen it coming in. We've seen the present and an increasing number of cases where people present at treatment centres in this country.
UPS STELLIANOS: There are tons everywhere…street corners, hotels, everywhere.
V/O 6: The South Africa police don’t agree.
UPS RAYMOND LALLA: But there hasn't been any major trend to indicate that South Africa is a market for heroin.
UPS GARY LEWIS: For over the last few years we have noticed that the trend has picked up. And picked up reasonably and significantly.
UPS RAYMOND LALLA: There is at about of heroin that is flown into the country. Is the flow massive enough or is it just a trickle.
UPS STELLIANOS: I thought it was a trickle but it’s a river.
V/O 7: It’s not only in South Africa that heroin abuse is on the increase. In countries around us, like Mozambique and Tanzania, the number of addicts is growing.
UPS ABDUL ISSA: The trafficking druggers they are creating a local market in Mozambique.
UPS GEORGE TIMBUKA: We have declared total war on drugs. We have so many addicts and they are leaning on drugs and if they are addictive of course they are killing our country. So we are worried.
UPS ABDUL ISSA: This is a very important transit; this is where the people feel free to operate.
UPS GEORGE TIMBUKA: We are made to understand; our youths have been recruited to go outside and take the drugs.
UPS ABDUL ISSA: The drug is increasing as a transit to South Africa to Europe, from Asia to Mozambique in order to go to South Africa and Europe.
V/O 8: Heroin comes in two varieties, white and brown…so-called "Thai white" and "brown sugar." The bulk of the world's heroin supply comes from the poppy fields of Afghanistan in southwest Asia.
UPS GARY LEWIS: This is in the fields of opium. It is then converted to a morphine base and there from heroin. It is then trafficked out of that region and then it finds its way down over various routes. Either over the deserts or the main truck roads into Pakistan.
V/O 9: From Pakistan, heroin is trafficked around the world. One destination is East Africa…where drug agencies have recently detected an important international drug route. Heroin is transported to the Tanzanian City of Dar es Salaam…and from there…southwards to Mozambique and South Africa.
UPS GARY LEWIS: There is an overland route and a significant one or more than one from the east African ports into Southern Africa and South Africa specifically is where as I have indicated the market rests. We see it as an increasingly wearing and increasingly voluminous route to bring heroin into South Africa.
V/O 10: Very little is known about this route, except that it seems to be growing… as more and more heroin flows into the region. In June this year, Alex Stellianos and a Special Assignment team embarked on a journey through Mozambique and Tanzania to expose this route. How are the drugs moved from Tanzania to South Africa? Who’re the drug dealers? How big is the drug problem in these countries?
UPS STELLIANOS: I spoke about it for a long long time about 3 years. When I learned about the route I tried to make a difference or ask some people who got the power to make a difference but nobody listens. So this time I put it on camera.
V/O 12: The Mozambican capital of Maputo…where our journey started.
UPS STELLIANOS: I've worked with several syndicates, I can speak the language in Maputo and I can relate to people. I stay in cheap pensions or in hotels and then from there you meet the people that are either connected or are involved in the trade of drugs or crime related to drugs and that is how you expose your drug dealers.
V/O 13: Our first aim was to get into the drug suburb of Little Colombia… to record just how available drugs are in Maputo. We armed Stellianos with a spy camera. When he was in Maputo three years ago, he made contact with a young drug dealer and addict in Little Colombia. His name… Chico.
UPS STELLIANOS: When I went to Maputo now and I saw Chico he remembered me from 2000 and he was interested in how we are going to make money. Chico was my card into little Columbia and the dealers in Maputo. He smokes anything from cocaine, dagga, and heroin…whatever you give him he will smoke and try.
UPS STELLIANOS: I entered the first house around three in the afternoon on a weekday. There must have been 30 people in the house, busy either smoking cocaine, heroin.
UPS ADDICT: I want a rock, call that girl with the rocks.
UPS STELLIANOS: There was hardly space to sit, it was very smelly because they lock all the doors. It was a horrific experience because all these people are high. They look at you funny as about to say what are you doing here. I am the only white man.
UPS STELLIANOS: Now whenever they would want crack they would call a very young girl most probably 15/16 from outside with a dinner plate. With different sizes of rock or crack on the plate. I sat with the camera on my lap…luckily nobody tried to rob me maybe they thought there was money in but nobody tried to rob me. And all the time I sat with the camera on my lap yes.
UPS STELLIANOS: You must understand drugs goes with desperation. So at the end of the day the people all end up in the same boat. They will sell and do anything for the next dose of drugs.
UPS STELLIANOS: It is two sisters living in this one house. One is a schoolgirl and the other one is the mother of the small baby with a white husband. And the schoolgirl was selling heroin and crack in her bedroom. Whatever you want to smoke you will tell her and she will sell it to you also…she presents the crack on a dinner plate. You choose your rock, you smoke it or whichever…how much grams of heroin you want. When I was in Maputo in 2000 I saw a lot of heroin in little Columbia. It is now not only in little Columbia it is all over town. Its rife you can find heroin everywhere.
V/O 14: And this is Chico, the drug addict and dealer who took Stellianos into Little Colombia. He lives with his parents in one of these houses. Officially, "Little Colombia" is known as "Zona Militar" – once a military barrack. When the war between Frelimo and Renamo ended in the early nineties, the houses were given to demobilized soldiers. In order to survive, some started smuggling drugs.
UPS CHICO: When I wake up morning…drugs, business here at Military Zone. Too much people living here business drugs.
V/O 15: Chico is a sick man… he can hardly breathe. That morning his doctor warned him that unless he stops smoking heroin or so-called "brown sugar", he will die.
UPS CHICO: We stay too much time in no good hospital. So today…enough.
UPS GARY LEWIS: It is something that you cannot easily walk away from, in fact there are very rare the recorded instances of people walking away from it. And as a result of that you become a essentially chemical slave.
UPS CHICO: too much house business drugs. Everyday with Capremone drugs.
V/O 15: The majority of addicts seem to prefer to smoke or "chase" heroin. But many “spike” or inject it. It was on a Saturday morning that Stellianos walked into a flat in the vicinity of "Little Colombia"…. where he came across Carlos Felner and Dadinha Manique.
V/O 16: Carlos was once a top Mozambican government official…a former university professor…a veterinary surgeon…an acquaintance of former President Samora Machel. Didinja was an auditor at the United Nations and is a member of one of Maputo's top families.
UPS CARLOS: Sorry for the spectacle. It's an ugly spectacle.
UPS STELLIANOS: When they finish their session of drugs Carlos took out a piece of bread, he broke it open and put a samoosa in there and ate it. and I thought it must be hell.
V/O 17: We later traced Didinja and Carlos to an almost-empty and dreary apartment not far from Little Colombia. It’s difficult to imagine that ten years ago, they lived among the elite of Maputo. Then they started using heroin and cocaine… and lost everything.
UPS DIDINJA: Everything…this is not our house. We rent this house. There is no furniture inside and Carlos is working and they pay him monthly but we
UPS CARLOS: We manage only for food and for rent.
UPS DIDINJA: But the worst is…uh sorry. Is the family…the worst is the family out there who suffer. I just try to finish this as quick as I can and tell them how guilty or sorry I feel for what I did to them.
V/O 18: The couple spikes every morning in order to get through the day.
UPS CARLOS: I don’t become drunk if I don’t use I become sick. If I use…for me…for me this is like medicine. I need to use because if I don’t use I become sick.
UPS DIDINJA: If we didn’t took it in the morning we would not be here talking with you now. First I felt power, and the work and the house and the life.
UPS CARLOS: But
UPS DIDINJA: It a huge feeling. But you never realise it at the moment, you will realise it too late.
V/O 19: A few years ago, Didinja suffered serious brain damage.
UPS DIDINJA: I took a gram of cocaine with two doses of heroin, I mix it I did a spin bull of shots and ppp!
AD BREAK
Carlos, Didinja and Chico have seen the drug trade in Maputo growing over the years. More and more foreigners coming in with heroin and cocaine.
UPS CHICO: In drugs of drogue brigade, Tanzania… Tanzania these people of Tanzania.
UPS DIDINJA: Ten years ago or 12 years ago there were 3/4 Tanzanian guys but now there are hundreds of them.
UPS CHICO: These police they want money.
UPS CARLOS: the problem is the police don’t do nothing here. The most of them they are corrupt.
UPS STELLIANOS: They will stay in the outskirts of Little Columbia to find people going in or out to get money from them.
V/O 19: Abdul Issa is a former judge, deputy speaker of parliament and special advisor to the minister of justice. He now heads an organization that investigates corruption.
UPS ABDUL: Only the trafficking of cannabis is being harassed. You will never…never hear that people is being harassed because he is trafficking heroin or cocaine.
V/O 20: Isabel Rupia is the deputy attorney general. She was recently appointed head of a commission on drugs and corruption.
UPS ISABEL: There is a problem with corruption in the police…and the justice system. It is a serious problem.
UPS ABDUL: Maybe the police arrest the people. They arrest the people and then they say I can release with 100 meticash…100 000…next one they arrest the people, give me 100 meticash this is the way of life probably I don’t know. Probably this is the way of life.
UPS ISABEL: There is corruption in the police because of low salaries. They pay them very poorly. It is easy to corrupt them.
V/O 21: The police in Mozambique have been unable to arrest any significant drug dealers. Yet it took Alex Stellianos only a couple days to meet up with them. He posed as a drug dealer from South Africa who wanted to buy heroin and cocaine. This is Martha, one of the smaller dealers in Little Colombia.
UPS STELLIANOS: The smaller dealers that I approached to get to the big ones. They kept saying for that quantity you must get to one of the big five.
UPS MARTHA: The stuff here is expensive. There's a person at the back. We don’t know that person.
UPS STELLIANOS: The big five is the 5 big drug dealers in Maputo.
V/O 22: Stellianos was soon introduced to this man, Mario, one of Maputo's so-called "big five".
UPS STELLIANOS: I am very successful, lots of money. He drives a brand new stolen or hijacked Jetta from South Africa. He wears lots and lots of gold and a Michel Herbelin watch.
UPS MARIO: If I drink another whisky, I will be drunk again.
V/O 23: And this is Charles, Mario's business partner in Maputo.
UPS STELLIANOS: Mario is a drug dealer and Charles is basically…he is a car thief but he is also a courier for Mario.
UPS CHARLES: Mario had to be here at two. But he went to fetch stuff. Coke.
UPS STELLIANOS: How much?
UPS CHARLES: One and a half…
UPS STELLIANOS: Good stuff?
UPS CHARLES: Very good.
UPS STELLIANOS: They supply…the big five supplies South Africa with heroin.
UPS CHARLES: Every Saturday stuff comes.
UPS STELLIANOS: Every Saturday.
UPS CHARLES: There’s a guy. He’s coming tomorrow, from there. We have to give him.
UPS STELLIANOS: From Johannesburg?
UPS CHARLES: Ja, from Johannesburg. He comes to collect.
UPS STELLIANOS: I asked Mario that before I buy anything from him I need samples of cocaine and I need samples of heroin. Which at the next meeting he supplied me with a sample of each.
UPS STELLIANOS: This one, I’ll take a full one.
UPS MARIO: How much you’re taking?
UPS STELLIANOS: What?
UPS MARIO: Brown, you want five, 500?
UPS STELLIANOS: I want a full one. Here I can take five.
UPS STELLIANOS: He could sell me a kilo of heroin for R244 000.00, he could sell me a half of a kilo of cocaine I think it was a R103 000.00 or a R106 000.00, which is very very good prices.
UPS MARIO: Okay, this if brown here?
UPS STELLIANOS: This is for white, this is for brown.
UPS MARIO: Okay.
UPS STELLIANOS: Mario could offer me kilo two kilos cocaine, kilo two kilos heroin. That’s what Mario could offer me. He could offer me as much drugs as I had money.
V/O 24: Mario's real name is DP Themba. He also owns a flat in Johannesburg.
UPS JAC: We've recorded you, you are a drug dealer you sell heroin is South Africa.
UPS MARIO: I don’t understand.
UPS JAC: Ja we've recorded you…you tried to sell heroin to that man. You’ve been recorded on camera.
UPS MARIO: I don’t understand..what say!
UPS JAC: You speak very good English…no!
UPS MARIO: Portuguese…come here, come here…
UPS JAC: We've recorded you, your name is Mario you drive a Jetta.
V/O 25: Three weeks after arriving in Maputo, it was time to follow the heroin trail north – towards the coastal town of Pemba.
UPS STELLIANOS: I decided to go to Pemba because the smaller dealers in Maputo kept on talking about the drugs coming from Pemba. Which is actually not true they come through Pemba not from Pemba. From Maputo to Pemba it took me six days and I was travelling with a little girl. it was a tar road with pot holes that if a car fell in there, the car disappears. I had to cross the Zambezi with a ferry. When I got to the Zambezi there was no ferry the ferry had sunk. I spent two days sleeping at the rivers at the Zambezi River. And on the second day they sort of assembled the last parts of this ferry and continued my journey to Pemba. Pemba a beautiful little town. There is absolutely no robots in Pemba. Most probably one of the most beautiful beaches I have seen in my life. its absolutely a picture. I have never been to Pemba in my life, I didn’t know anybody in Pemba. To find the drugs it took me two days. I met up with young boys they were running a bicycle shop and I started by asking them about dagga and they said yes dagga is not a problem and when we were talking I sort of went on to heroin. And they said well the heroin I must speak to the Tanzanians. They are the ones with heroin. And said look I need can you introduce me to one of the Tanzanians, which I did meet later in the day the first Tanzanian. The one is OBI, then you get Abdullah and there was a guy they called White. They were all in opposition with one another.
UPS DEALER: One hundred grams, I’ve got.
UPS STELLIANOS: One hundred grams? How much one hundred grams?
UPS DEALER: Four thousand-dollar.
UPS STELLIANOS: Then I started spreading the word that I wanted to buy a quantity of heroin. They said yes but the heroin comes in ovus, which means eggs. Which means a ten-gram capsule, which they swallow in Pakistan, bring through Tanzania and further down in Africa. The egg would be covered in foil paper, with dull side on the outside and covered with a plastic tape the whole egg and very well covered. So in order for them to show me what's inside this they have to unwrap the plastic, undo the foil and throw the pure form of heroin was in my hand. The couriers or the mules they seal these eggs very well and they swallow them. And that is how they transport the heroin today. The very big dealers are not in Pemba these are very small dealers. Although they can sell you most probably 300 grams at a time.
UPS DEALER: There in Dar es Salaam you can get even one kilo…two kilo, three kilo. Depends on your money.
UPS STELLIANOS: How much one kilo?
UPS DEALER: One kilo?
UPS STELLIANOS: Yes. In dollar!
UPS DEALER: One thousand, point five. 1 500 dollar? Per kilo?
UPS DEALER 2: Ja.
UPS STELLIANOS: Finally I said to him look I think my problem will be to…I am in Pemba as to travel to Dar es Salaam.
UPS DEALER: Because there you can find ten kilo or more.
UPS TRANSLATOR: Do people from Maputo also buy in Dar es Salaam?
UPS DEALER: Dar es Salaam, yes. They buy there and come past here back to Maputo.
AD BREAK
UPS STELLIANOS: From Pemba to Dar es Salaam it took me three days. There is this travelling bus Pemba, Masingwa, Land rover masingwa to Namonto, which is the border. Crossed the river with a little wooden boat, took this run down bus in Twara to Dar es Salaam. This was 3 days travelling and by then I contracted Malaria. In Dar es Salaam you have the main guys of heroin trade. I don’t say they don’t do other drugs but their mainline is heroin. They import the heroin directly from Pakistan.
UPS GEORGE TIMBUKA: There is a problem in Tanzania of drugs, drugs like heroin. The big amount of course which is found here through the airport mostly.
UPS STELLIANOS : The drug trading in Tanzania is a wholesale business. They would sell more to dealers than they would sell in South Africa.
UPS GEORGE: The country's borders we are bordering 8 countries and we cannot guard every piece of land in this country.
V/O 26: Much of the information that the Tanzanian government has gathered on the drug trade in their country was only given to them recently…. after a big heroin trader and addict was admitted to a psychiatric institution in Dodoma in central Tanzania. He had attacked his family under the influence of heroin and stolen their goods.
UPS OTHMAN: Heroin and cocaine. Brown or white I use that like sugar. I used to take something like a foil and I take a little bit stuff in that I put on top of the foil and a take a matches and I start to get a smoke. How to keep in smoke, how to get stimulisation. How to feel good in that, like this how to chase.
UPS GEORGE: When somebody is poor you can use him…you can use him. So are people who are couriers, who are sent by those who got money to go to such countries to bring or traffic drugs on their behalf.
UPS OTHMAN: There is plenty of that because our new generation now they don’t have anything to do. They don’t have a job or education or something like that and life is bad. So most of them they are involved in this thing. Just to get something at least money to survive.
UPS GEORGE: You know and I know, I spent so many years to get a car but the youth they like to spent a month or two to get a car. He get a good house, he gets hot, he has so many girlfriends so he is back on trafficking of drugs which is easy for him to get quick money.
V/O 27: Othman used to visit Pakistan frequently. He would swallow capsules of heroin to bring back to Tanzania.
UPS OTHMAN: We used to go there and buy the stuff and then we come straight to the city. Then the city we would start to supply to the other cities.
UPS GEORGE: I have some information that our people Tanzanians that are arrested outside dealing on drugs. They maybe generally Tanzanian…they maybe fake Tanzanians.
UPS OTHMAN: People they used to take heroin in a packet. The small packet like a ten-gram like this then they used to swallow.
UPS GEORGE: Drug is poison it kills.
UPS OTHMAN: When it leaks you straight die.
V/O 28: Just as in Maputo and Pemba, it took Alex Stellianos only days to make contact with several drug dealers. One of the dealers he’d met in Pemba travelled with him to Dar es Salaam. A man by the name of Abdullah.
UPS STELLIANOS: We were having lunch and Mangala came past and greeted Abdullah. Abdullah is a customer of Mangala. So it’s a small time dealer greeting a big time dealer who then in turn invited me to his house later on that afternoon. Mangala is very big in the heroin trade in Dar es Salaam. He was trained way back in the 1990's by the Pakistanis. He has six to 8 women who act as mules for him. These female mules can swallow up to 80 capsules per person. Or they carry it on their purses, they wear their traditional Islamic dress and they carry the heroin on the purses.
UPS MANGALI: These two, they used to travelling also. This one and this one.
UPS STELLIANOS: They swallow?
UPS MANGALI: Ja, that one also. They bring something for me. I’m staying somewhere…hiding some place. She brings me all the things. Here, in Dar es Salaam.
UPS STELLIANOS: Mangala explained to me that an average man that can swallow can swallow up to 200 grams. They are trained to swallow. He says and then if a guy is experienced he can swallow a kilo and a half.
UPS MANGALA: If I say I show you, your eyes will not believe me. You won’t believe that these things come out…of somebody’s stomach.
UPS STELLIANOS: He loves women, he loves money and he loves fast cars.
UPS MANGALA: If you have this Mercedes Benz, the new model…even the stolen one. You just bring them here.
UPS STELLIANOS: You can sell them?
UPS MANGALA: Ja. I have five cars here. All my cars are from South Africa.
UPS STELLIANOS: He wanted a 130$ for 10 grams that is 13 000 dollars per kilo and he could give me 3 kilos.
UPS MANGALA: I can give you a connection with friends of mine...who are dealing with the huge amounts. Whether by shipment or whatever. Whether you need ten, twenty, up to 100…they can bring it to you.
UPS STELLIANOS: He is involved in supplying in America not only South Africa.
UPS MANGALA: We are even supplying into America. Some friends of mine are bringing it from Pakistan. Me, I can even talk their language. Me, I was there. You, you just go. Colour is no problem. You need something which is good, I think.
UPS STELLIANOS: This is 100 percent?
UPS MANGALA: 100 percent. You just go and try it.
UPS STELLIANOS: These samples were given to me because I posed as a buyer throughout this journey. Now the sample enables me to play for time not to buy drugs but to get more information and more contact with the drug dealer at that point in time. I met this drug dealer…oh a big drug dealer in Dar es Salaam by the name of Macgee. And I was waiting in a restaurant in the township for Mr. Macgee and they picked me up with a taxi. And then they stopped at a house and they made me walk into the house first. They locked all the doors and they indicated to me to sit down and they started interrogating me as to why I am there and what do I really want.
UPS MACGEE: So what you need now?
UPS STELLIANOS: First I need brown sugar. That’s why I’m coming here.
UPS MACGEE: So what you’re talking about is the price? It is good or it is not good?
UPS STELLIANOS: I cannot buy half-kick. If I go to Joburg with half-kick…
UPS MACGEE: It is not good to give you light-kick. If you take light-kick, you never come back from here.
UPS STELLIANOS: If you had to be on their wrong side they will take care of you.
UPS MACGEE: Okay, give to me 155.
UPS STELLIANOS: No business!
UPS MACGEE: Listen, listen…
UPS STELLIANOS: When you ready, phone me!
And I started the argument about prices and when they didn’t agree I used the excuse to try and get out of the house, which did work in my favour.
AD BREAK
UPS STELLIANOS: I don’t know Pretoria very well I stopped at a taxi driver and I asked him I am looking for a woman and he said I should drive up church street in Acardia, and I would find a woman I am looking for. And when I got there I discovered a block of flats called Len-Dan, which consists basically of rooms they rent out to prostitutes who prostitute for drugs. Zodwa smokes heroin and coke together everyday of her life. She works on the streets at night, some days back I found out that she has been arrested for possession of drugs but she is in prison at the moment. But in Len-Dan you would find a guy on the corner of the building almost 24 hours on duty for anyone, who wants to buy heroin, coke whatever you like. The guy will be there to serve you. The first Tanzanian that I met his name was Johnny at len-dan.
UPS STELLIANOS: One gram how much? 250?
UPS DEALER: No, 300.
UPS STELLIANOS: Thai white?
UPS DEALER: Yes.
UPS STELLIANOS: It was about 730 at night I stopped and I actually got out of the car and I was surrounded by 8 to ten dealers…they just pushed drugs in my hand. Its very easy to buy its like a road house trade. It's just a bit more busy than a road house. I spoke and personally met at least six of these Tanzanians. Johnny, Salim and Albert are the biggest drug dealers in Pretoria. They have no fear for the police. Nothing what so ever.
UPS RAYMOND LALLA: We are aware of some of them and yes we have intentions to deal with them.
UPS STELLIANOS: I couldn’t get kilos in Pretoria I could probably get 200 grams of heroin.
UPS RAYMOND LALLA: The quantities we are finding are the quantities that has been picked up. Has been negligible but its devastating enough to create a problem for us.
UPS STELLIANOS: I wanted to get fair amount of drugs on camera. I wanted to buy about 50 grams of heroin, and Albert said to me look I will take you to my flat and you can buy what I've got. We went to the flat and he took out a small box. There was most probably 5 to six grams of heroin. A packet of rocks and two half moons of cocaine. When I couldn’t find the right price of heroin in Pretoria I came with the excuse that I would rather fly to Pakistan to go and buy my own heroin. With Salim it sounded like a very good idea because he has got a brother that lives in Lahore. And then I said to him fine can we phone your brother. Which he was very excited and he said yes. And I actually made several phone calls to his brother in Lahore and his brother would make sure that I received the amount of drugs that I want and come home safely.
UPS STELLIANOS: I would buy a kilo of heroin and now this is pure heroin in Lahore in Pakistan for 1500 dollars.
UPS STELLIANOS: You're gonna buy if you go?
UPS SALIM: Yes, I'm gonna buy.
UPS STELLIANOS: How much?
UPS SALIM: One kilo.
UPS STELLIANOS: You're going to swallow?
UPS SALIM: Yes.
UPS STELLIANOS: If you can drive a truck or a car you can bring any amount of heroin from Tanzania to South Africa…right to South Africa, right up to Johannesburg it is that easy. Because there is absolutely no control and as a matter of fact people don’t even know what it looks like.
V/O 29: The United Nations has just reported a bumper poppy harvest in Afghanistan. An estimated 500 metric tons of heroin will be dumped on world markets this year.
UPS DIDINJA: This thing is the devil. Never… Never… Never…let your youngest do it. You destroy everything…everything. You cannot imagine what is everything.
OUT SEQUENCE CREDITS AND LOGO
OUTRO: PRESENTER
Fade to title: Mainline a heroin traffic route.
V/O 1: Alex Stellianos is a man on a mission… to expose an international drug route… a narcotic corridor through which vast amounts of drugs are smuggled… especially heroin from Pakistan and Afghanistan into eastern and southern Africa.
UPS STELLIANOS: I've got a vendetta against drugs all these years I have tried to make a difference but obviously one person cant make a difference. But I hate drugs.
V/O 2: Stellianos has vast experience in the underworld of drugs. First as an agent for the South African Narcotics Bureau. Then from 1995 until 2000, for the American Drug Enforcement Administration. He was registered as an agent in South America, Asia and the Caribbean where he infiltrated cocaine syndicates.
UPS STELLIANOS: These people are bandits, they are syndicates of crime. If they ever suspect you and they find you they will kill you.
V/O 3: Three years ago, Stellianos was on assignment in Maputo Mozambique to bust a mandrax factory in. It was then he discovered something even more sinister: a suburb known as "Little Colombia".
UPS STELLIANOS: Little Columbia is part of a military zone I would estimate 60 year old military houses in a surburb and heroin is available in each and every one of those 60 houses in the surburb. Kids get born there kids grow up in little Columbia. In other words his childhood and his teenage hood period he grows up with drugs what is his future. He's either a addict or a drug dealer. That was the worst part of little Columbia. I saw lots and lots of drugs. I saw cocaine, I saw heroin. I saw lots of sick people in Little Columbia…I saw lots of drugs.
V/O 4: Stellianos also discovered a heroine route from Mozambique to South Africa. He was told that the drugs originate in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
UPS STELLIANOS: I tried to tell Organised Crime I tried to tell different police officers about the heroin route, nobody listened.
V/O 5: Three years later, and heroin abuse is on the increase in South Africa.
UPS GARY LEWIS: Our concern is that its growing and if you ask me how much I don’t know but especially in the past two years we have seen it coming in. We've seen the present and an increasing number of cases where people present at treatment centres in this country.
UPS STELLIANOS: There are tons everywhere…street corners, hotels, everywhere.
V/O 6: The South Africa police don’t agree.
UPS RAYMOND LALLA: But there hasn't been any major trend to indicate that South Africa is a market for heroin.
UPS GARY LEWIS: For over the last few years we have noticed that the trend has picked up. And picked up reasonably and significantly.
UPS RAYMOND LALLA: There is at about of heroin that is flown into the country. Is the flow massive enough or is it just a trickle.
UPS STELLIANOS: I thought it was a trickle but it’s a river.
V/O 7: It’s not only in South Africa that heroin abuse is on the increase. In countries around us, like Mozambique and Tanzania, the number of addicts is growing.
UPS ABDUL ISSA: The trafficking druggers they are creating a local market in Mozambique.
UPS GEORGE TIMBUKA: We have declared total war on drugs. We have so many addicts and they are leaning on drugs and if they are addictive of course they are killing our country. So we are worried.
UPS ABDUL ISSA: This is a very important transit; this is where the people feel free to operate.
UPS GEORGE TIMBUKA: We are made to understand; our youths have been recruited to go outside and take the drugs.
UPS ABDUL ISSA: The drug is increasing as a transit to South Africa to Europe, from Asia to Mozambique in order to go to South Africa and Europe.
V/O 8: Heroin comes in two varieties, white and brown…so-called "Thai white" and "brown sugar." The bulk of the world's heroin supply comes from the poppy fields of Afghanistan in southwest Asia.
UPS GARY LEWIS: This is in the fields of opium. It is then converted to a morphine base and there from heroin. It is then trafficked out of that region and then it finds its way down over various routes. Either over the deserts or the main truck roads into Pakistan.
V/O 9: From Pakistan, heroin is trafficked around the world. One destination is East Africa…where drug agencies have recently detected an important international drug route. Heroin is transported to the Tanzanian City of Dar es Salaam…and from there…southwards to Mozambique and South Africa.
UPS GARY LEWIS: There is an overland route and a significant one or more than one from the east African ports into Southern Africa and South Africa specifically is where as I have indicated the market rests. We see it as an increasingly wearing and increasingly voluminous route to bring heroin into South Africa.
V/O 10: Very little is known about this route, except that it seems to be growing… as more and more heroin flows into the region. In June this year, Alex Stellianos and a Special Assignment team embarked on a journey through Mozambique and Tanzania to expose this route. How are the drugs moved from Tanzania to South Africa? Who’re the drug dealers? How big is the drug problem in these countries?
UPS STELLIANOS: I spoke about it for a long long time about 3 years. When I learned about the route I tried to make a difference or ask some people who got the power to make a difference but nobody listens. So this time I put it on camera.
V/O 12: The Mozambican capital of Maputo…where our journey started.
UPS STELLIANOS: I've worked with several syndicates, I can speak the language in Maputo and I can relate to people. I stay in cheap pensions or in hotels and then from there you meet the people that are either connected or are involved in the trade of drugs or crime related to drugs and that is how you expose your drug dealers.
V/O 13: Our first aim was to get into the drug suburb of Little Colombia… to record just how available drugs are in Maputo. We armed Stellianos with a spy camera. When he was in Maputo three years ago, he made contact with a young drug dealer and addict in Little Colombia. His name… Chico.
UPS STELLIANOS: When I went to Maputo now and I saw Chico he remembered me from 2000 and he was interested in how we are going to make money. Chico was my card into little Columbia and the dealers in Maputo. He smokes anything from cocaine, dagga, and heroin…whatever you give him he will smoke and try.
UPS STELLIANOS: I entered the first house around three in the afternoon on a weekday. There must have been 30 people in the house, busy either smoking cocaine, heroin.
UPS ADDICT: I want a rock, call that girl with the rocks.
UPS STELLIANOS: There was hardly space to sit, it was very smelly because they lock all the doors. It was a horrific experience because all these people are high. They look at you funny as about to say what are you doing here. I am the only white man.
UPS STELLIANOS: Now whenever they would want crack they would call a very young girl most probably 15/16 from outside with a dinner plate. With different sizes of rock or crack on the plate. I sat with the camera on my lap…luckily nobody tried to rob me maybe they thought there was money in but nobody tried to rob me. And all the time I sat with the camera on my lap yes.
UPS STELLIANOS: You must understand drugs goes with desperation. So at the end of the day the people all end up in the same boat. They will sell and do anything for the next dose of drugs.
UPS STELLIANOS: It is two sisters living in this one house. One is a schoolgirl and the other one is the mother of the small baby with a white husband. And the schoolgirl was selling heroin and crack in her bedroom. Whatever you want to smoke you will tell her and she will sell it to you also…she presents the crack on a dinner plate. You choose your rock, you smoke it or whichever…how much grams of heroin you want. When I was in Maputo in 2000 I saw a lot of heroin in little Columbia. It is now not only in little Columbia it is all over town. Its rife you can find heroin everywhere.
V/O 14: And this is Chico, the drug addict and dealer who took Stellianos into Little Colombia. He lives with his parents in one of these houses. Officially, "Little Colombia" is known as "Zona Militar" – once a military barrack. When the war between Frelimo and Renamo ended in the early nineties, the houses were given to demobilized soldiers. In order to survive, some started smuggling drugs.
UPS CHICO: When I wake up morning…drugs, business here at Military Zone. Too much people living here business drugs.
V/O 15: Chico is a sick man… he can hardly breathe. That morning his doctor warned him that unless he stops smoking heroin or so-called "brown sugar", he will die.
UPS CHICO: We stay too much time in no good hospital. So today…enough.
UPS GARY LEWIS: It is something that you cannot easily walk away from, in fact there are very rare the recorded instances of people walking away from it. And as a result of that you become a essentially chemical slave.
UPS CHICO: too much house business drugs. Everyday with Capremone drugs.
V/O 15: The majority of addicts seem to prefer to smoke or "chase" heroin. But many “spike” or inject it. It was on a Saturday morning that Stellianos walked into a flat in the vicinity of "Little Colombia"…. where he came across Carlos Felner and Dadinha Manique.
V/O 16: Carlos was once a top Mozambican government official…a former university professor…a veterinary surgeon…an acquaintance of former President Samora Machel. Didinja was an auditor at the United Nations and is a member of one of Maputo's top families.
UPS CARLOS: Sorry for the spectacle. It's an ugly spectacle.
UPS STELLIANOS: When they finish their session of drugs Carlos took out a piece of bread, he broke it open and put a samoosa in there and ate it. and I thought it must be hell.
V/O 17: We later traced Didinja and Carlos to an almost-empty and dreary apartment not far from Little Colombia. It’s difficult to imagine that ten years ago, they lived among the elite of Maputo. Then they started using heroin and cocaine… and lost everything.
UPS DIDINJA: Everything…this is not our house. We rent this house. There is no furniture inside and Carlos is working and they pay him monthly but we
UPS CARLOS: We manage only for food and for rent.
UPS DIDINJA: But the worst is…uh sorry. Is the family…the worst is the family out there who suffer. I just try to finish this as quick as I can and tell them how guilty or sorry I feel for what I did to them.
V/O 18: The couple spikes every morning in order to get through the day.
UPS CARLOS: I don’t become drunk if I don’t use I become sick. If I use…for me…for me this is like medicine. I need to use because if I don’t use I become sick.
UPS DIDINJA: If we didn’t took it in the morning we would not be here talking with you now. First I felt power, and the work and the house and the life.
UPS CARLOS: But
UPS DIDINJA: It a huge feeling. But you never realise it at the moment, you will realise it too late.
V/O 19: A few years ago, Didinja suffered serious brain damage.
UPS DIDINJA: I took a gram of cocaine with two doses of heroin, I mix it I did a spin bull of shots and ppp!
AD BREAK
Carlos, Didinja and Chico have seen the drug trade in Maputo growing over the years. More and more foreigners coming in with heroin and cocaine.
UPS CHICO: In drugs of drogue brigade, Tanzania… Tanzania these people of Tanzania.
UPS DIDINJA: Ten years ago or 12 years ago there were 3/4 Tanzanian guys but now there are hundreds of them.
UPS CHICO: These police they want money.
UPS CARLOS: the problem is the police don’t do nothing here. The most of them they are corrupt.
UPS STELLIANOS: They will stay in the outskirts of Little Columbia to find people going in or out to get money from them.
V/O 19: Abdul Issa is a former judge, deputy speaker of parliament and special advisor to the minister of justice. He now heads an organization that investigates corruption.
UPS ABDUL: Only the trafficking of cannabis is being harassed. You will never…never hear that people is being harassed because he is trafficking heroin or cocaine.
V/O 20: Isabel Rupia is the deputy attorney general. She was recently appointed head of a commission on drugs and corruption.
UPS ISABEL: There is a problem with corruption in the police…and the justice system. It is a serious problem.
UPS ABDUL: Maybe the police arrest the people. They arrest the people and then they say I can release with 100 meticash…100 000…next one they arrest the people, give me 100 meticash this is the way of life probably I don’t know. Probably this is the way of life.
UPS ISABEL: There is corruption in the police because of low salaries. They pay them very poorly. It is easy to corrupt them.
V/O 21: The police in Mozambique have been unable to arrest any significant drug dealers. Yet it took Alex Stellianos only a couple days to meet up with them. He posed as a drug dealer from South Africa who wanted to buy heroin and cocaine. This is Martha, one of the smaller dealers in Little Colombia.
UPS STELLIANOS: The smaller dealers that I approached to get to the big ones. They kept saying for that quantity you must get to one of the big five.
UPS MARTHA: The stuff here is expensive. There's a person at the back. We don’t know that person.
UPS STELLIANOS: The big five is the 5 big drug dealers in Maputo.
V/O 22: Stellianos was soon introduced to this man, Mario, one of Maputo's so-called "big five".
UPS STELLIANOS: I am very successful, lots of money. He drives a brand new stolen or hijacked Jetta from South Africa. He wears lots and lots of gold and a Michel Herbelin watch.
UPS MARIO: If I drink another whisky, I will be drunk again.
V/O 23: And this is Charles, Mario's business partner in Maputo.
UPS STELLIANOS: Mario is a drug dealer and Charles is basically…he is a car thief but he is also a courier for Mario.
UPS CHARLES: Mario had to be here at two. But he went to fetch stuff. Coke.
UPS STELLIANOS: How much?
UPS CHARLES: One and a half…
UPS STELLIANOS: Good stuff?
UPS CHARLES: Very good.
UPS STELLIANOS: They supply…the big five supplies South Africa with heroin.
UPS CHARLES: Every Saturday stuff comes.
UPS STELLIANOS: Every Saturday.
UPS CHARLES: There’s a guy. He’s coming tomorrow, from there. We have to give him.
UPS STELLIANOS: From Johannesburg?
UPS CHARLES: Ja, from Johannesburg. He comes to collect.
UPS STELLIANOS: I asked Mario that before I buy anything from him I need samples of cocaine and I need samples of heroin. Which at the next meeting he supplied me with a sample of each.
UPS STELLIANOS: This one, I’ll take a full one.
UPS MARIO: How much you’re taking?
UPS STELLIANOS: What?
UPS MARIO: Brown, you want five, 500?
UPS STELLIANOS: I want a full one. Here I can take five.
UPS STELLIANOS: He could sell me a kilo of heroin for R244 000.00, he could sell me a half of a kilo of cocaine I think it was a R103 000.00 or a R106 000.00, which is very very good prices.
UPS MARIO: Okay, this if brown here?
UPS STELLIANOS: This is for white, this is for brown.
UPS MARIO: Okay.
UPS STELLIANOS: Mario could offer me kilo two kilos cocaine, kilo two kilos heroin. That’s what Mario could offer me. He could offer me as much drugs as I had money.
V/O 24: Mario's real name is DP Themba. He also owns a flat in Johannesburg.
UPS JAC: We've recorded you, you are a drug dealer you sell heroin is South Africa.
UPS MARIO: I don’t understand.
UPS JAC: Ja we've recorded you…you tried to sell heroin to that man. You’ve been recorded on camera.
UPS MARIO: I don’t understand..what say!
UPS JAC: You speak very good English…no!
UPS MARIO: Portuguese…come here, come here…
UPS JAC: We've recorded you, your name is Mario you drive a Jetta.
V/O 25: Three weeks after arriving in Maputo, it was time to follow the heroin trail north – towards the coastal town of Pemba.
UPS STELLIANOS: I decided to go to Pemba because the smaller dealers in Maputo kept on talking about the drugs coming from Pemba. Which is actually not true they come through Pemba not from Pemba. From Maputo to Pemba it took me six days and I was travelling with a little girl. it was a tar road with pot holes that if a car fell in there, the car disappears. I had to cross the Zambezi with a ferry. When I got to the Zambezi there was no ferry the ferry had sunk. I spent two days sleeping at the rivers at the Zambezi River. And on the second day they sort of assembled the last parts of this ferry and continued my journey to Pemba. Pemba a beautiful little town. There is absolutely no robots in Pemba. Most probably one of the most beautiful beaches I have seen in my life. its absolutely a picture. I have never been to Pemba in my life, I didn’t know anybody in Pemba. To find the drugs it took me two days. I met up with young boys they were running a bicycle shop and I started by asking them about dagga and they said yes dagga is not a problem and when we were talking I sort of went on to heroin. And they said well the heroin I must speak to the Tanzanians. They are the ones with heroin. And said look I need can you introduce me to one of the Tanzanians, which I did meet later in the day the first Tanzanian. The one is OBI, then you get Abdullah and there was a guy they called White. They were all in opposition with one another.
UPS DEALER: One hundred grams, I’ve got.
UPS STELLIANOS: One hundred grams? How much one hundred grams?
UPS DEALER: Four thousand-dollar.
UPS STELLIANOS: Then I started spreading the word that I wanted to buy a quantity of heroin. They said yes but the heroin comes in ovus, which means eggs. Which means a ten-gram capsule, which they swallow in Pakistan, bring through Tanzania and further down in Africa. The egg would be covered in foil paper, with dull side on the outside and covered with a plastic tape the whole egg and very well covered. So in order for them to show me what's inside this they have to unwrap the plastic, undo the foil and throw the pure form of heroin was in my hand. The couriers or the mules they seal these eggs very well and they swallow them. And that is how they transport the heroin today. The very big dealers are not in Pemba these are very small dealers. Although they can sell you most probably 300 grams at a time.
UPS DEALER: There in Dar es Salaam you can get even one kilo…two kilo, three kilo. Depends on your money.
UPS STELLIANOS: How much one kilo?
UPS DEALER: One kilo?
UPS STELLIANOS: Yes. In dollar!
UPS DEALER: One thousand, point five. 1 500 dollar? Per kilo?
UPS DEALER 2: Ja.
UPS STELLIANOS: Finally I said to him look I think my problem will be to…I am in Pemba as to travel to Dar es Salaam.
UPS DEALER: Because there you can find ten kilo or more.
UPS TRANSLATOR: Do people from Maputo also buy in Dar es Salaam?
UPS DEALER: Dar es Salaam, yes. They buy there and come past here back to Maputo.
AD BREAK
UPS STELLIANOS: From Pemba to Dar es Salaam it took me three days. There is this travelling bus Pemba, Masingwa, Land rover masingwa to Namonto, which is the border. Crossed the river with a little wooden boat, took this run down bus in Twara to Dar es Salaam. This was 3 days travelling and by then I contracted Malaria. In Dar es Salaam you have the main guys of heroin trade. I don’t say they don’t do other drugs but their mainline is heroin. They import the heroin directly from Pakistan.
UPS GEORGE TIMBUKA: There is a problem in Tanzania of drugs, drugs like heroin. The big amount of course which is found here through the airport mostly.
UPS STELLIANOS : The drug trading in Tanzania is a wholesale business. They would sell more to dealers than they would sell in South Africa.
UPS GEORGE: The country's borders we are bordering 8 countries and we cannot guard every piece of land in this country.
V/O 26: Much of the information that the Tanzanian government has gathered on the drug trade in their country was only given to them recently…. after a big heroin trader and addict was admitted to a psychiatric institution in Dodoma in central Tanzania. He had attacked his family under the influence of heroin and stolen their goods.
UPS OTHMAN: Heroin and cocaine. Brown or white I use that like sugar. I used to take something like a foil and I take a little bit stuff in that I put on top of the foil and a take a matches and I start to get a smoke. How to keep in smoke, how to get stimulisation. How to feel good in that, like this how to chase.
UPS GEORGE: When somebody is poor you can use him…you can use him. So are people who are couriers, who are sent by those who got money to go to such countries to bring or traffic drugs on their behalf.
UPS OTHMAN: There is plenty of that because our new generation now they don’t have anything to do. They don’t have a job or education or something like that and life is bad. So most of them they are involved in this thing. Just to get something at least money to survive.
UPS GEORGE: You know and I know, I spent so many years to get a car but the youth they like to spent a month or two to get a car. He get a good house, he gets hot, he has so many girlfriends so he is back on trafficking of drugs which is easy for him to get quick money.
V/O 27: Othman used to visit Pakistan frequently. He would swallow capsules of heroin to bring back to Tanzania.
UPS OTHMAN: We used to go there and buy the stuff and then we come straight to the city. Then the city we would start to supply to the other cities.
UPS GEORGE: I have some information that our people Tanzanians that are arrested outside dealing on drugs. They maybe generally Tanzanian…they maybe fake Tanzanians.
UPS OTHMAN: People they used to take heroin in a packet. The small packet like a ten-gram like this then they used to swallow.
UPS GEORGE: Drug is poison it kills.
UPS OTHMAN: When it leaks you straight die.
V/O 28: Just as in Maputo and Pemba, it took Alex Stellianos only days to make contact with several drug dealers. One of the dealers he’d met in Pemba travelled with him to Dar es Salaam. A man by the name of Abdullah.
UPS STELLIANOS: We were having lunch and Mangala came past and greeted Abdullah. Abdullah is a customer of Mangala. So it’s a small time dealer greeting a big time dealer who then in turn invited me to his house later on that afternoon. Mangala is very big in the heroin trade in Dar es Salaam. He was trained way back in the 1990's by the Pakistanis. He has six to 8 women who act as mules for him. These female mules can swallow up to 80 capsules per person. Or they carry it on their purses, they wear their traditional Islamic dress and they carry the heroin on the purses.
UPS MANGALI: These two, they used to travelling also. This one and this one.
UPS STELLIANOS: They swallow?
UPS MANGALI: Ja, that one also. They bring something for me. I’m staying somewhere…hiding some place. She brings me all the things. Here, in Dar es Salaam.
UPS STELLIANOS: Mangala explained to me that an average man that can swallow can swallow up to 200 grams. They are trained to swallow. He says and then if a guy is experienced he can swallow a kilo and a half.
UPS MANGALA: If I say I show you, your eyes will not believe me. You won’t believe that these things come out…of somebody’s stomach.
UPS STELLIANOS: He loves women, he loves money and he loves fast cars.
UPS MANGALA: If you have this Mercedes Benz, the new model…even the stolen one. You just bring them here.
UPS STELLIANOS: You can sell them?
UPS MANGALA: Ja. I have five cars here. All my cars are from South Africa.
UPS STELLIANOS: He wanted a 130$ for 10 grams that is 13 000 dollars per kilo and he could give me 3 kilos.
UPS MANGALA: I can give you a connection with friends of mine...who are dealing with the huge amounts. Whether by shipment or whatever. Whether you need ten, twenty, up to 100…they can bring it to you.
UPS STELLIANOS: He is involved in supplying in America not only South Africa.
UPS MANGALA: We are even supplying into America. Some friends of mine are bringing it from Pakistan. Me, I can even talk their language. Me, I was there. You, you just go. Colour is no problem. You need something which is good, I think.
UPS STELLIANOS: This is 100 percent?
UPS MANGALA: 100 percent. You just go and try it.
UPS STELLIANOS: These samples were given to me because I posed as a buyer throughout this journey. Now the sample enables me to play for time not to buy drugs but to get more information and more contact with the drug dealer at that point in time. I met this drug dealer…oh a big drug dealer in Dar es Salaam by the name of Macgee. And I was waiting in a restaurant in the township for Mr. Macgee and they picked me up with a taxi. And then they stopped at a house and they made me walk into the house first. They locked all the doors and they indicated to me to sit down and they started interrogating me as to why I am there and what do I really want.
UPS MACGEE: So what you need now?
UPS STELLIANOS: First I need brown sugar. That’s why I’m coming here.
UPS MACGEE: So what you’re talking about is the price? It is good or it is not good?
UPS STELLIANOS: I cannot buy half-kick. If I go to Joburg with half-kick…
UPS MACGEE: It is not good to give you light-kick. If you take light-kick, you never come back from here.
UPS STELLIANOS: If you had to be on their wrong side they will take care of you.
UPS MACGEE: Okay, give to me 155.
UPS STELLIANOS: No business!
UPS MACGEE: Listen, listen…
UPS STELLIANOS: When you ready, phone me!
And I started the argument about prices and when they didn’t agree I used the excuse to try and get out of the house, which did work in my favour.
AD BREAK
UPS STELLIANOS: I don’t know Pretoria very well I stopped at a taxi driver and I asked him I am looking for a woman and he said I should drive up church street in Acardia, and I would find a woman I am looking for. And when I got there I discovered a block of flats called Len-Dan, which consists basically of rooms they rent out to prostitutes who prostitute for drugs. Zodwa smokes heroin and coke together everyday of her life. She works on the streets at night, some days back I found out that she has been arrested for possession of drugs but she is in prison at the moment. But in Len-Dan you would find a guy on the corner of the building almost 24 hours on duty for anyone, who wants to buy heroin, coke whatever you like. The guy will be there to serve you. The first Tanzanian that I met his name was Johnny at len-dan.
UPS STELLIANOS: One gram how much? 250?
UPS DEALER: No, 300.
UPS STELLIANOS: Thai white?
UPS DEALER: Yes.
UPS STELLIANOS: It was about 730 at night I stopped and I actually got out of the car and I was surrounded by 8 to ten dealers…they just pushed drugs in my hand. Its very easy to buy its like a road house trade. It's just a bit more busy than a road house. I spoke and personally met at least six of these Tanzanians. Johnny, Salim and Albert are the biggest drug dealers in Pretoria. They have no fear for the police. Nothing what so ever.
UPS RAYMOND LALLA: We are aware of some of them and yes we have intentions to deal with them.
UPS STELLIANOS: I couldn’t get kilos in Pretoria I could probably get 200 grams of heroin.
UPS RAYMOND LALLA: The quantities we are finding are the quantities that has been picked up. Has been negligible but its devastating enough to create a problem for us.
UPS STELLIANOS: I wanted to get fair amount of drugs on camera. I wanted to buy about 50 grams of heroin, and Albert said to me look I will take you to my flat and you can buy what I've got. We went to the flat and he took out a small box. There was most probably 5 to six grams of heroin. A packet of rocks and two half moons of cocaine. When I couldn’t find the right price of heroin in Pretoria I came with the excuse that I would rather fly to Pakistan to go and buy my own heroin. With Salim it sounded like a very good idea because he has got a brother that lives in Lahore. And then I said to him fine can we phone your brother. Which he was very excited and he said yes. And I actually made several phone calls to his brother in Lahore and his brother would make sure that I received the amount of drugs that I want and come home safely.
UPS STELLIANOS: I would buy a kilo of heroin and now this is pure heroin in Lahore in Pakistan for 1500 dollars.
UPS STELLIANOS: You're gonna buy if you go?
UPS SALIM: Yes, I'm gonna buy.
UPS STELLIANOS: How much?
UPS SALIM: One kilo.
UPS STELLIANOS: You're going to swallow?
UPS SALIM: Yes.
UPS STELLIANOS: If you can drive a truck or a car you can bring any amount of heroin from Tanzania to South Africa…right to South Africa, right up to Johannesburg it is that easy. Because there is absolutely no control and as a matter of fact people don’t even know what it looks like.
V/O 29: The United Nations has just reported a bumper poppy harvest in Afghanistan. An estimated 500 metric tons of heroin will be dumped on world markets this year.
UPS DIDINJA: This thing is the devil. Never… Never… Never…let your youngest do it. You destroy everything…everything. You cannot imagine what is everything.
OUT SEQUENCE CREDITS AND LOGO
OUTRO: PRESENTER