11 Sep 2013

Senior Magistrate Alice Rammapudi is expected to deliver judgment on September 13 in the case in which a 25-year-old South African woman is facing a single charge of importation of drugs without approval of the director of health services.

According to the charge sheet, the accused, Tholakele 'Faith' Mohaladi, was on August 21, 2013 arrested at Sir Seretse Khama International Airport (SSKA) for importing Ephedrine drugs weighing 19.438 kg into the country without the director of health services approval.

Mohaladi, who is represented by Mr Friday Leburu, has since pleaded guilty paving way for the court to read the summary of facts to her and for the defence to submit mitigating facts.

The accused reportedly arrived at SSKA on August 21 after having departed from India on August 20, 2013 and connected in Nairobi by boarding Kenyan Airways to Botswana. Upon arrival the accused declared her one red bag which contained chocolates and Indian cotton with the customs officers and paid the customs duty.

Upon declaring her goods she was then searched by a detective under Narcotics’ Fauna and Flora Investigations Unit after he received a tip off about a lady suspected to be smuggling substances suspected to be drugs from India via Botswana using Kenyan Airways. When the accused bag was searched false compartments were noticed on both its flaps.

Both compartments concealed brown plastics containing white powder suspected to be Ephedrine. Mitigating on behalf of the accused, Mr Leburu said the court should note that Ephedrine was not a banned substance but a controlled drug which fell under second schedule II of drugs in Botswana.

He noted that it was used for medicinal purposes such as treating asthma, stimulate increase in energy, burning fat and suppressing appetite among others. He therefore wondered why it should be classified because it was just like soda ash.

He said the accused who had already been convicted by the court had only failed to notify the director on the type and quantity of this drug and on the mode of transport and time when she would be arriving in Botswana and her time of departure to South Africa, which was her final destination.

Mr Leburu noted that the accused never intended to sell or dispense the drug in Botswana as she embarked on a journey with a fixed destination. In addition he said she was a South African from the outskirts of Germinston, a mining town, where poverty was rife and pronounced by the squalor and inhabitable condition which she lived in.

In addition, he noted that the accused was one of the many youth who were unemployment and was part of the 40 per cent unemployed citizens of South Africa most of whom lived below poverty datum line. Mr Leburu also said Mohaladi had limitation to economic opportunities and basic necessities.

In addition, he said, she was four months pregnant. As such he prayed the court not to send her to prison as the charge attracted a fine of P10 000 and an imprisonment term of two years.

He therefore asked the court to use the South African law which was used between 17th and 20th centuries whereby a pregnant mother would plead belly which automatically forced the jury to have sympathy for the unborn child.

He said by 1848 such mothers were pardoned because that saved the hardship that the unborn child may suffer while in prison.

In addition Mr Leburu said the accused was a single mother and was simply used as a drug mule because of her vulnerability, noting that those who usually benefitted in the drug business were the drug lords, drug barons and intelligence services. Ends