Two more women were caught trying to sneak drugs into SA last week, just a month after the execution of Durban-born drug mule Janice Linden.

 

 The two women are among dozens of South Africans arrested for the transport of drugs in the past two months. On Wednesday, a middle-aged woman was arrested on the border of Namibia and SA, at the Ariamsvlei border post, allegedly transporting mandrax estimated to be worth about R100 000. After a court appearance on Friday in Karasburg, the woman was taken to a local prison while she awaits the start of her trial. The Saturday Star also reported that a woman, Patience Monkei-Khame, had been arrested at Malawi’s Lilongwe International Airport for transporting almost 4kg of cocaine in a pram. Monkei-Khame had allegedly been offered R30 000 to smuggle the drugs into SA, but now faces Malawi’s harsh anti-drug laws. Patricia Gerber, director of Locked Up – an NGO that has for years been pressuring the government into bringing South Africans home from abroad to serve their sentences locally – said there had been more than 20 drug-related arrests at the end of November, and at least 12 since then. Nolubabalo Nobanda, a South African who was arrested at a Bangkok airport in December for transporting 1.5kg of cocaine in her dreadlocks, has yet to appear before a court. Gerber, who has been in contact with Nobanda’s distraught family, said that while Thailand was faster with processing its drug-related cases, it could be months before Nobanda had an idea of whether she would spend decades in a Thai prison. In December, Linden was executed by lethal injection in China for drug smuggling, leaving her family devastated after they had tried for years to prevent the execution.