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‘Drug kingpins don’t care if you’re caught’, warns mom of Gauteng ‘mule’ detained in Mauritius

‘Drug kingpins don’t care if you’re caught’, warns mom of Gauteng ‘mule’ detained in Mauritius
A suspect from Paraguay was arrested at OR Tambo International Airport for allegedly smuggling what appeared to be cocaine, ingested in plastic bullets, from Brazil. (Photo: SA Police Service)
Caryn Dolley
By Caryn Dolley
10 Dec 2024
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A Gauteng mother is warning anyone thinking of couriering drugs to beware that those they end up working for do not care about them. She feels strongly about this because her son, accused in a drug mule case, has been jailed in Mauritius since Christmas 2019.

When Jeanette Coetzee of Brakpan said goodbye to her son, Morné Burger, on 23 December 2019, it never crossed her mind that it would be the last time in years that she would see him in person.

He flew out of South Africa the next day, Christmas Eve.

Coetzee did not think anything untoward had happened to him.

She had no reason to. 

But a few days later Coetzee was informed that Burger, a father who was about to turn 34, had been arrested at an airport in Mauritius.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaGf-UkLo_k

And she found out that he and the woman he had travelled with were suspected of ingesting heroin capsules and smuggling those there from South Africa.

While the case against Burger is yet to conclude, Coetzee lamented how his arrest and detention in another country had affected several lives.

‘They don’t care’


“I just want my child home now,” she told Daily Maverick last week, sighing in exasperation.

Coetzee had learnt about the couriering of drugs when trying to figure out what exactly Burger was accused of.

The case against him aside, Coetzee emphatically cautioned that what could appear to be a quick way of making money via transporting a stash of drugs could derail lives and end up with someone sitting in jail for years while the owner of the narcotics simply continues smuggling.

“The drug lords are just interested in you because they get rich out of your poorness,” she warned. “Also being a drug mule for them, if you get caught, they do not care about you at all. They do not know you.”

Burger is still in custody in Mauritius since his Christmas Day arrest in 2019.

Coetzee said he was expected back in court there in March 2025.

From what she understands he is yet to officially plead in the case.

Read more: Unemployment, allure of cash sees spike in SA drug mules held in foreign jails

There are other South Africans jailed in Mauritius.

On Monday a delegation from the Social Development Department travelled there to collect a five-year-old who was born while her mother, from this country, was detained in Mauritius for drug trafficking.

“The biological mother was arrested in May 2019 while she was pregnant with the child,” the department said. “The minor child is currently in prison under the care of her mother.”

In October 2023 it was reported that another South African, Gareth Gruen, had been jailed for about 20 years in Mauritius for importing drugs there.

He was arrested in 2018, much like Burger was, at the airport on suspicion that there were capsules of drugs (which turned out to be heroin) in his body.

A suspect from Paraguay was arrested at OR Tambo International Airport on 6 December 2024 with cocaine in capsules allegedly found in her body. (Photo: SA Police Service)



drug kingpin drug mule Police intercepted a suspect from Paraguay who was found to have capsules of cocaine insider her body. (Photo: SA Police Service)


Crackdowns and South Africa


The problem of drug mules persists.

About a dozen suspected mules were recently arrested at Johannesburg’s OR Tambo International Airport.

Most of them arrived in South Africa from São Paulo in Brazil, where, Daily Maverick established, police had made triple the number of arrests this year compared with 2023 in terms of suspects who had drugs concealed in their bodies.

In November, a 21-year-old was also arrested at the airport in São Paulo after cocaine was found attached to her body. According to Brazil’s Federal Police she had been planning to fly to South Africa.

Read more: Fugitives and fake passports — Brazil’s ‘Cocaine Queen’ investigation and the R700m drug stash sent to SA

Because of what happened to Burger, news of suspected drug mules being arrested is tough for Coetzee.

And she feels especially emotional over the December holidays – the time he was arrested in Mauritius.

Coetzee recalled the run-up to Burger’s arrest.

She had heard he was going to help an older man, who did not want to shut down his business over the festive season, with work.

Barely a week later, when she heard he was locked up in Mauritius, Coetzee remained calm.

“But the tears were running.”



An article from a Mauritius publication, dated the month after Burger’s arrest (January 2020), said he and the woman he was travelling with allegedly “swallowed pellets of [heroin] before boarding [an] Air Mauritius flight… from Johannesburg”.

The article said that after landing in Mauritius they had been profiled, interrogated and arrested.

Coetzee had received a letter from the International Relations and Cooperation Department, dated February 2020 and which Daily Maverick has seen, stating that the South African High Commission in Port Louis had advised that Burger had been arrested.

A part of it said: “A South African arrested and sentenced abroad, will have to serve their sentence in the country where the crime was committed and the person cannot be transferred to South Africa to serve his/her sentence.”

Daily Maverick has not received a response from the department this week to questions about Burger and drug mules.

International matrix


In the five years since her son’s arrest, Coetzee, who also has a daughter, said her weight had plummeted due to chronic stress.

“As a single parent, living a middle-class life with my two kids, I never ever thought that this heartache will strike me one day.”

Patricia Gerber, who heads Locked Up, an organisation that helps South Africans arrested for drug smuggling in other countries, knows about Burger’s case.

She said Mauritius is notorious for dishing out hefty prison sentences to drug smugglers.

Read more: Clash of the Cartels – revealing the global organised crime networks that exist right under your nose

Speaking more broadly, Gerber said drug kingpins intentionally target vulnerable individuals, especially those who are not financially stable.

If those recruited into trafficking were already abusing drugs, their entry into smuggling could result in them being worse off.

In some cases, though, individuals recruited by kingpins were effectively trafficked between countries while involved in – and sometimes forced into – trafficking drugs.

They were therefore also crime victims.

Gerber pointed out that drug kingpins often got away with breaking the law, while those at the bottom of a syndicate or cartel’s hierarchy, like mules, were caught and held to account.

She said if large signs were erected at airports warning travellers about the penalties and prison sentences involved in trafficking, some of them might change their plans at the last minute – if they are not under threat.

Read more: Five suspected traffickers arrested at OR Tambo airport in sting after R500m cocaine flown from SA to Australia

While it is not clear how many South African drug mule suspects are jailed in other countries, Gerber said there are many.

She believed that drug trafficking involved corrupt government officials, including in police services, along with workers at ports, in different countries.

“As far as I’m concerned, the connections are international.”

A suspect from Paraguay was arrested at OR Tambo International Airport for allegedly smuggling what appeared to be cocaine, ingested in plastic bullets, from Brazil. (Photo: SA Police Service)


Targets


Coetzee agreed with Gerber that trafficking syndicates targeted people who are desperate for money, and in certain cases hooked on drugs.

Mules were offered lump sums of cash and the amounts could be increased based on how much more they tried to smuggle.

But Coetzee cautioned again: “Drug lords will rather send you to a country where they know the death penalty will be an immediate court decision. Wake up!” 



She had managed to speak to her son on Skype since his arrest. He looked well and was coping.

But she still found it unfair that drug trafficking kingpins did not seem to be held to account.

It was rather those suspected or convicted of couriering kingpins’ consignments who ended up in jail for years. DM

Caryn Dolley’s explosive new book, Man Alone: Mandela’s Top Cop – Exposing South Africa’s Ceaseless Sabotage, is now available in bookstores and at the Daily Maverick Shop.

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