SAPS arrest five Mexicans in drugs lab raid

South African police have arrested five Mexican nationals after a raid on a crystal meth lab at a remote farm, a spokesman said Monday, the latest in a series of such busts.

Police were investigating a link between the lab raided Friday and Latin American drug cartels, a spokesman for the elite Hawks unit told AFP, with Mexican labs reportedly spreading around the world to supply international markets.

Police also seized methamphetamine worth around 350 million rand ($20 million) packed into lunch boxes and buckets on the farm near Volksrust, around 250 kilometres (155 miles) southeast of Johannesburg.

In July 2024, the Hawks arrested three Mexicans in a raid on a drugs lab on a farm near Groblersdal, about 200 kilometres from Johannesburg, when they seized about two billion rands worth of methamphetamine.

Another Mexican national was arrested in November at a crystal meth lab on a farm in Rietfontein, north of Johannesburg.

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

The Geneva-based agency said in a July 2025 report that there had been a proliferation of "Mexican meth" labs around the globe over the past decade.

Recent busts of drugs labs in South Africa and Mozambique "are emblematic of the expansion of Latin American cartels into Africa and cooperation with local criminal groups as well as other foreign collaborators in production and trafficking", it said.