South Africa police bust major drugs lab, arrest two Mexicans

Crystal Meth at the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI). [AFP]

South African police have uncovered a major crystal meth laboratory on the border with Zimbabwe and rounded up several foreign nationals including two Mexicans, they said Friday.

The overnight operation follows a series of drugs busts involving Mexican nationals over the past months that have led authorities to suspect Latin American cartels are expanding into Africa.

Security forces raided the laboratory late Thursday and seized drugs and equipment worth around 600 million rand ($37 million), they said in a statement.

They arrested two Mexican nationals, two Zimbabweans and a Malawian. The operation was hidden on a farm near the northern border town of Musina.

"The discovery has exposed an alleged sophisticated, industrial-scale operation believed to have been established for the manufacture of dangerous illicit substances destined for distribution," the statement said.

Police in May uncovered a multi-million-dollar methamphetamine laboratory and arrested 11 suspects, including four Mexicans, on a remote farm northwest of Johannesburg.

Authorities estimated the value of the drugs produced there at around 250 million rand.

In September, police raided another clandestine lab in a rural area about 250 kilometres (155 miles) southeast of Johannesburg, seizing methamphetamine worth 350 million rand and arresting five Mexican nationals.

outh Africa is a major consumer of meth and the market for the drug is growing in neighbouring countries and elsewhere in the region, according to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.

The Geneva-based agency said in a July 2025 report that drugs labs in South Africa and Mozambique "are emblematic of the expansion of Latin American cartels into Africa and cooperation with local criminal groups".