On May 15, 2020, South African police in northern Limpopo Province near the border with Zimbabwe impounded four vehicles and cigarettes worth zar1.4 million ($83,530). The drivers, transporting cigarettes smuggled from Zimbabwe, avoided arrest by bolting out of their vehicles and out-sprinting police. A fortnight later, four South African men and a Zimbabwean woman were arrested in the same province after a high-speed chase while attempting to spirit 10,000 boxes, or 200,000 sticks, of cigarettes into South Africa. In the last two weeks of June, 30 people were arrested, resulting in the confiscation of cigarettes worth zar4 million. The consignments had been smuggled through the official border post at Beitbridge or via some 200 illegal crossing points on the Limpopo River, which forms the border between the two southern African countries. In Botswana on April 4, police in a northern district close to Zimbabwe arrested a Motswana and a Zimbabwean for smuggling 127 cartons of cigarettes into that country. On April 16, three men were arrested near South Africa's border with Mozambique while transporting 20,095 packs of cigarettes worth zar900,000. The contraband was coming from Mozambique.
展开▼
