Illustrative image | An intelligence-driven operation was conducted in the early hours of 22 June 2021 at a container depot on Avenue East in Isipingo after information of smuggling of drugs into the country was received. (Photo: SAPS) | Heavy police presence at the Cape Town Magistrate's Court where Ralph Stanfield appeared on 2 October 2023. (Photo: Shelley Christians) | DJ Sumbody. (Photo: Gallo Images / Oupa Bopape) 
The police discovered a major cocaine consignment, weighing about 541kg and worth more than R200-million, at a container depot in Isipingo in the south of Durban in June four years ago.
The stash had logos on it, including the Jaguar brand.
It may be coincidence, but a now-jailed member of Mexico’s globally notorious Sinaloa Cartel, which is known for bribing officials and appears to be active in South Africa, used the image of a jaguar on cocaine bundles to show his ownership.
A few months after the Isipingo bust, and about 100km away, criminals targeted cocaine of the same weight and value in November 2021.
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Windows at the Port Shepstone offices of the Hawks, the police unit that focuses on priority crimes in the country, were forced open.
A safe inside the building was tampered with — and 541kg of cocaine, presumably the consignment confiscated in Isipingo, was stolen.
This all happened in KwaZulu-Natal, the province where Durban harbour is located.
Global traffickers seem to prefer using that port when shipping masses of drugs into South Africa, pointing to cartels having pointsmen in place there to smuggle narco consignments around.
Broken protocol suggestions
Now, nearly four years after the cocaine theft from the Port Shepstone Hawks offices that saw an internal inquiry ordered, the police have still not told the public what really happened.
It therefore is not clear if anyone has been held to account for the critical breach at a key building that was clearly not properly secured.
Several sources in policing circles have before said the burglary was probably an inside job — that police officers colluded with drug traffickers.
A source recently expressed frustration that the case exposed “negligence” on the part of the police, yet key questions about it remain unanswered.
Daily Maverick has also established that police officers appear to have broken their own protocol in the way the R200-million cocaine was stored over several months.
It should have been sent to a police laboratory, but was not.
Last week Daily Maverick asked the Hawks several questions about the saga, including if it was the norm to keep masses of drugs at its offices, whether any members had been polygraph tested or had suddenly resigned after the theft, and what had happened to the case.
In response, Hawks spokesperson Thandi Mbambo simply said: “We confirm that this matter is still under investigation and details thereof cannot be publicised.”
The R200-million Port Shepstone cocaine theft now fits into a broader and unprecedented policing scandal in South Africa that is forcing it back into public focus.
Last month, on 6 July 2025, KwaZulu-Natal Police Commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi held a press conference and made a series of astounding allegations that are effectively reshaping aspects of the South African Police Service (SAPS).
He said a high-level criminal syndicate was operating in the country and it extended into the police, the Police Ministry, Parliament, prison officials, the judiciary and other law-enforcement authorities.
Mkhwanazi also alleged that a “drug cartel” headquartered in Gauteng and bringing in narcotics from South America was ultimately controlling the syndicate.
On top of that, he accused the police minister at the time, Senzo Mchunu, and the National Deputy Commissioner of Crime Detection, Shadrack Sibiya, of shutting down a political killing task team, a move that hindered investigations.
The accusations, which they denied, resulted in them being placed on leave. Mchunu also denied accusations that he had colluded with a crime suspect.
Firoz Cachalia is now filling the Police Minister position in an acting capacity.
Sibiya has launched legal action challenging Mkhwanazi’s accusations and what he says is unfair treatment.
DJ Sumbody’s murder — claims and denial
Mkhwanazi made several other accusations during last month’s press conference.
He referenced confiscated firearms allegedly linked to several cases in Gauteng involving high-profile artists.
Despite suspects being identified in those cases, Mkhwanazi said prosecutors had yet to act so that arrests could be made.
It appeared that one of the cases involved Oupa John Sefoka, better known as DJ Sumbody, who was murdered in a Gauteng shooting in November 2022.
Two others were also killed in the incident.
/file/dailymaverick/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/od-stanfield-court.jpg "Ralph Stanfield and his wife Nicole Johnson at the Cape Town Regional Court on 16 September 2023 in Cape Town, South Africa. (Photo: Gallo Images / Die Burger / Jaco Marais)")
Sefoka had business ties to, among others, suspected 28s gang boss Ralph Stanfield who faces unrelated criminal accusations in Cape Town (and who previously faced firearm-related charges, since withdrawn, alongside ex-police officers from Gauteng).
About two weeks after Mkhwanazi’s press conference, four suspects were arrested in connection with Sefoka’s murder.
Among the four were former police detective Michael Pule Tau and businessman Katiso Molefe — Mkhwanazi had referenced both, who face other criminal charges, during his July press conference when he also alleged a drug cartel was based in Gauteng.
Previously there were unofficial murmurs, that could not be corroborated, that Sefoka’s killing may be connected to drugs and gangsterism.
And shortly after last month’s arrests connected to the murder, Sunday World published an article saying that “police insiders and associates close to” Sefoka claimed his killing was linked to a drug consignment that “disappeared” from KwaZulu-Natal police custody a few years ago.
This is an apparent reference to the Port Shepstone R200-million cocaine theft of 2021.
The Sunday World article said sources also claimed that “the consignment resurfaced in Johannesburg’s club circuit, where it was sold at a cut-rate price” and that this upset the “original owners” of the drugs.
MEDIA RELEASE FROM “BE A SUMBODY” FOUNDATION: pic.twitter.com/tte0gw5Ytq
— IRS Forensic Investigations (@FraudWatchZA) July 30, 2025
According to the claims, Sefoka got entangled in this saga that also involved a Cape Town “businessman”. (Daily Maverick, meanwhile, has heard a countering theory – that the original drug owners orchestrated the burglary to retrieve their drugs when they realised the consignment was in the poorly secured Hawks offices.)
Sefoka’s family, in a joint statement with a foundation linked to him, rubbished the Sunday World article’s contents.
It said the claims were “entirely unfounded and appear to be part of a calculated smear campaign aimed at exploiting his name for sensationalism”.
The issue of drugs, however, surfaced in the Alexandra Magistrate’s Court last week when Sefoka murder plot accused Katiso Molefe applied for bail.
The Alexandra Magistrate's Court has for the first time heard how the murder of popular music producers DJ Sumbody and DJ Vintos were allegedly a drug-related hit. The accused, Katiso 'KT' Molefe, appeared in court on Wednesday for a bail application. He was arrested over two… pic.twitter.com/w0hfKDjs5K
— Newzroom Afrika (@Newzroom405) August 6, 2025
According to various reports on the court proceedings, the State had alleged that Molefe had ties to the illicit drug trade.
Molefe’s bail application is expected to resume on Friday, 15 August.
Back to the R200-million Port Shepstone theft of 2021.
Jaguar clue and (in)secure storage
According to various sources, that stolen cocaine consignment was the one found in Isipingo on 22 June 2021.
Traffickers may have got wind of pending police action and temporarily abandoned this stash destined for Gauteng.
A previous SAPS statement about the Isipingo interception said: “Twenty-six canvas bags with TikTok and Jaguar brands were found with bricks of cocaine.”
And Hawks head at the time, Godfrey Lebeya, had warned: “We are closing in on the drug cartels.”
While it remains unclear who owned the seized cocaine, Daily Maverick established that high-ranking Sinaloa Cartel member Jose Antonio Torres Marrufo, who was reportedly sentenced to 40 years in jail in the US in 2022, used aliases including “Jaguar”.
A US indictment against him and other Sinaloa Cartel members said he had “exclusively used the logo of a ‘jaguar’ on cocaine bundles to designate his ownership”.
In any event, when the R200-million cocaine consignment was stolen in 2021 a few months after the Isipingo bust, the Hawks issued limited details.
A statement had said the burglary occurred at their Port Shepstone offices over the weekend of 5 and 8 November 2021.
“The suspects gained entry into the building by forcing open the windows. One of the safes in the office, which were used to store exhibits, was tampered with,” the statement said.
“The suspects stole 541kg of cocaine drugs… and ransacked the office where safes were kept.”
All this suggests that for nearly five months an international cartel’s cocaine worth more than R200-million had been kept in Hawks offices that were not adequately secured, to the point that the windows could be forced open.
This brings up other highly concerning questions about what else is being stored in police premises and whether those buildings have proper security measures in place.
Forensic labs
According to government information, confiscated drugs aside from cannabis should be sent to an SAPS Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) for testing and storage.
A police minister response to a 2016 Parliamentary question about seized drugs said that except for cannabis, consignments were sent to forensic science laboratories “for analysis, secure storage and destruction, whilst awaiting finalisation of the case and issuing of a relevant disposal order by the National Prosecuting Authority”.
Another response to a Parliamentary question, dated February this year, stated: “Drugs, including illegal substances (excluding cannabis), are stored separately and all illegal drugs, regardless of whether a case docket has been registered, must be forwarded to the… FSL for analysis and eventual destruction.”
The SAPS, according to yet another response to a June 2025 Parliamentary question, has four laboratories in the country — in Gauteng, the Western Cape, Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.
It therefore appears that the R200-million worth of cocaine stolen from the Hawks offices in Port Shepstone in 2021 should have been stored at the KwaZulu-Natal Forensic Science Laboratory, which is in Amanzimtoti. (This FSL experienced flooding damage in 2022.)
Why the police did not secure the cocaine there now remains one of many publicly unanswered questions around the theft.
The Crime Intelligence cases
Adding to that scandal is an incident sandwiched between the R200m Isipingo cocaine confiscation of June 2021 and the theft of the cocaine in Port Shepstone a few months later.
In July 2021 a consignment of cocaine, also worth about R200-million, was intercepted in Johannesburg.
Four suspects were arrested.
According to their lawyer, they were Warrant Officer Marumo Mogana, a Crime Intelligence officer; Warrant Officer Steve Pakula, an Organised Crime Unit member; Samuel Mashaba who was acting deputy director of Gauteng’s community safety department; and businessman Tumelo Nku.
The case against them went on to be withdrawn.
Earlier this year, though, the National Prosecuting Authority told Daily Maverick it had instructed further investigations be carried out.
A decision on the case would be made after that.
This saga exposed divisions within the country’s historically controversial Crime Intelligence unit.
Daily Maverick previously reported that Major-General Feroz Khan, the head of counterintelligence and security at Crime Intelligence, was accused of defeating the ends of justice and bringing the SAPS into disrepute over his presence at this cocaine interception.
But Khan, via court processes, countered that the Crime Intelligence head at the time, Dumisani Khumalo, had used the cocaine interception to try to get rid of him because of his investigations into the abuse of secret funds, with possible links to Khumalo.
According to the police, the cocaine at the centre of that controversy had come from Brazil, arrived in KwaZulu-Natal and was transported to Gauteng.
This matches some of Mkhwanazi’s recent accusations about an alleged drug cartel and the routes it used.
Read more: ‘No smear campaigning’ — Masemola warns Crime Intelligence management while filling unit vacancies
As for Khumalo, Daily Maverick reported that earlier this year the SAPS had warned Parliament he was being targeted via misinformation because he was cleaning up the Crime Intelligence unit.
Khumalo and six colleagues went on to be arrested in June on corruption-related charges, which they denied.
Mkhwanazi, during his pivotal press conference the following month, implied that they had been arrested with the deliberate aim of destroying Crime Intelligence.
Cartels and Commission of Inquiry
President Cyril Ramaphosa recently announced a Commission of Inquiry into Mkhwanazi’s allegations.
Its terms of reference stated that it would investigate “whether criminal syndicates, including but not limited to drug cartels, have infiltrated or exert undue influence over” various law enforcing bodies.
This included the SAPS, metro law enforcement in Gauteng, the National Prosecuting Authority and judiciary.
Read more: Blood ties: South Africa caught in a web of murderous, drug-smuggling Brazilian gangs
Daily Maverick has reported extensively on the different cartels that operate via South Africa.
Brazil’s notorious Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), or First Capital Command, is among them.
And there are, of course, suspicions relating to the Sinaloa Cartel, once headed by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera who was sentenced to life imprisonment in the US in 2019.
Read more: From South Africa to Sinaloa: Jackie Selebi and the ‘parallel’ US drug trial of Mexico’s ex-cop boss
A previous US court document relating to his pretrial detention had explained: “A cornerstone of his strategy was the corruption of officials at every level of local, municipal, state, national and foreign government, who were paid cash bribes.”
Suspected corruption in different government and state structures plus alleged cartel activity is at the core of what the Commission of Inquiry into Mkhwanazi’s accusations is set to focus on.
The 2021 Port Shepstone R200-million cocaine theft out of Hawks offices may therefore be among the incidents that the commission covers — or, in terms of exposing finer details, uncovers. DM