Two Mexicans were among five people arrested at a crystal meth lab worth more than half a billion rand on a farm in Musina, Limpopo.
The lab was raided late on Thursday night.
The blitz was carried out by the US Drug Enforcement Administration and Homeland Security, alongside the Hawks, SAPS, the South African Narcotics Bureau, Crime Intelligence and the Special Task Force.
R600m crystal meth lab raided
Hawks spokesman Colonel Avele Fumba said drugs and laboratory equipment worth an estimated R600m were seized, along with an undisclosed amount of cash.
The five men are aged between 20 and 47.
Two are Mexican, two are Zimbabwean, and one is Malawian.
Fumba said the raid followed a two-month investigation into drug manufacturing on the farm, and that the lab was set up for industrial-scale production.
It is the third clandestine drug lab shut down in Limpopo.
Tubs of suspected crystal meth stand on wooden battens inside the Musina farm lab raided by the Hawks
US DEA joins major Limpopo bust
Limpopo Hawks head Major General Gopz Govender said the operation had gone after the machinery behind the drug trade.
“This R600 million seizure is not merely a quantity of drugs taken off the streets. It represents the disruption of an entire criminal enterprise,” Govender said.
“We will follow the money, the networks and every person connected to this operation.”
Limpopo police commissioner Lieutenant General Jan Scheepers said communities would not be left to become markets for syndicates.
“Those who manufacture and distribute these dangerous substances must know that law enforcement is closing in on them,” Scheepers said.
Bags of chemicals and stacks of drums fill the shed on the Musina farm where drugs and equipment worth R600m were seized
Suspects due in court on Monday
Officers were still working the scene on Friday morning.
Photographs released by police show officers in masks and surgical gloves moving through a low structure roofed with corrugated iron and walled with green shade netting.
Industrial steel pots stand on the concrete floor beside a gas cylinder and a digital floor scale.
Musina sits on the Beitbridge border post with Zimbabwe, the busiest land crossing in southern Africa.
The five are due in the Musina Magistrate’s Court on Monday.
They face charges of manufacturing and possessing illicit drugs. More charges may follow.
IOL News
Police search the yard outside a Musina shack where a drug lab worth R600m was found
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