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B-Metro Reporter
Advancements are invariably used for good and ill. Such is the case with a Bulawayo kombi association that has grown in tandem with drug dealing.Thuba* had been driving a kombi for over a year when it happened. To that point, almost every trip Thuba went on along his City-Gwabalanda/Luveve route, with the occasional passenger pick-up and drop-off along the way, everything seemed normal. But one morning last year was different.
It started as any other day would for a kombi driver operating illegally along Sixth Avenue in Bulawayo. Thuba and his conductor, also a “weeder” rolled up to SaNe’s* house in Gwabalanda along Luveve Road near Lobengula West to buy a sachet of skunk and off they went or so they thought.
But then SaNe asked Thuba to take with him an “extra conductor ozalenga” and make three stops at places en route to the final destination, Sixth Avenue in the central business district. Thuba and his conductor were given instructions which were the same routine at each stop. Without his conductor ever getting out of the vehicle or stopping more than the expected time it takes to pick up or drop off a passenger, the “extra conductor” was to briefly encounter a potential “commuter” and then come back into the vehicle.
This conductor would linger during each of these stops for under a minute, according to Thuba, but never got back into the kombi with a passenger. Otherwise, the conductor was to act “pretty normal” throughout the whole trip, Thuba told B-Metro.
“My engagement with the extra conductor was small talk that he wasn’t too interested in reciprocating. I use skunk and when I know it is in my vehicle I can take necessary precautions. But it also means I know what a drug transaction looks like,” Thuba added.
He recognised that peculiar trip “for what it was,” Thuba admitted. There is no way of ever being entirely sure that trip was a series of handshake drug transactions. But if the public transport industry — and the association fashions itself as a public transport operator, after all — invariably gets used for good and ill, then of course the so-called empowerment of touts and kombi drivers now includes drug dealing.
The association has come under the microscope after revelations that the “notorious” drug boss popularly known as “SaNe” is at the centre of Gwabalanda’s drug supply chain and is using it to deflect attention from his illicit operations.
The Gwabalanda-based “transporter” is reportedly shipping drugs for gangs across the city from his Gwabalanda living room through kombis. “SaNe” is believed to be making thousands of dollars a week, using the association and its drivers to fix the movement of drugs and money.
In recent times, media outlets have taken note of the activities at SaNe’s Gwabalanda base where he uses kombi restorations as a front. The story of the ring set up to smuggle drugs in and around the city is yet to be told in full but there are a number of people allegedly connected to the operation including kombi drivers and conductors.
“SaNe”, described by a neighbour as an “extremely intelligent man”, is the brains behind the scheme. He has been supplying cannabis and various cough mixtures to locals for a few years but has, in recent years, upscaled to supplying crystal meth and cocaine and is said to run a tight ship. Another kombi driver who scores from SaNe described him as “the most comprehensive drug dealer Bulawayo’s western suburbs have ever seen”.
“You have a massive drug market which requires extra legal delivery mechanisms and a widespread, independently operated network of drivers for whom it is an ideal means of masking their activities,” said William Ncube, an anti-drug and substance abuse activist.One driver told B-Metro: “Hookers, thieves, and dealers have been using kombis for years, is it really surprising that drug dealers use kombis as well?”
A source who works with local security agencies said drug traffickers using public transport providers to facilitate business is an “interesting phenomenon,” albeit not widespread.“We are beginning to get intelligence that drugs are being moved through kombis. Drug dealers will use whatever vehicle they can to get their drugs from point A to point B, so kombis would surely be a part of that.”
*Not real name.
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