SA's Narcos Capture - the Mandrax trafficker and 'wanted terrorist' matrix haunting the ANC, Zuma, Guptas

Mandrax trafficker Vicky Goswami now has wildly different titles in different countries. In Dubai, he is a former prison inmate; in the US, he is a state witness; in India, he is a wanted suspect; and in South Africa, he is probably a source of anxiety to many.

Goswami’s name is a hinge that connects two sets of claims linking State Capture in South Africa to some of the world’s most notorious drug trafficking accused.

On one side, there are reports that members of the Gupta family – the nucleus of State Capture accusations in South Africa – laundered money on behalf of a self-professed spy from Pakistan whom the US has accused of being a prolific global drug don.

On the other, there are accusations that a suspected South African money launderer, with alleged ties to a global terrorist drug trafficker, washed cash for the Guptas. The Guptas have not been charged for this.

Surrounding all those claims – and countering denials – are the names of several weighty political figures, including that of former head of state Jacob Zuma.

Asked about related issues last week, including whether Zuma knew an alleged key money launderer, Jacob Zuma Foundation spokesperson Mzwanele Manyi told Daily Maverick: “You are fishing in a desert.”

A Gupta lawyer was unable to respond to Daily Maverick questions by the time of publication.

Former president Jacob Zuma addresses uMkhonto Wesizwe party supporters at Alexandra Stadium, 7 February 2024. (Photo: Gallo Images / City Press / Tebogo Letsie)

Mr Mandrax with Mandela

Goswami, the glue connecting various claims, has a deep history with South Africa. Originally from India, he operated in the country in the early 1990s.

About five years ago, asked in a US court whether he remembered once being photographed with democratic South Africa’s first president, Nelson Mandela, he replied that he did.

He denied involving himself with “the government of South Africa” because he wanted protection from prosecution. But several figures linked to law enforcement in this country, based on previous interviews, believe otherwise – that he tried for, and got, that protection.

Vuyo Ndzeku, who once smuggled drugs and later became an aviation industry businessman, at the Zondo Commission of Inquiry. (Photo: Papi Morake / Gallo Images)

Politics and Zambia

A web of political suspicions extends from Goswami. One strand of that expansive web leads to Zambia.

Before South Africa, Goswami was in Zambia (coincidentally where Zuma became the ANC’s intelligence chief during apartheid) in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

According to a 2014 Sunday Times article that no longer seems to be available online, Goswami once said: “I knew some of the ANC leaders and ministers when I was in South Africa from our days in Zambia. I gave money to the ANC and contributed to the struggle.”

During apartheid, the South African government had produced drugs. Members of the ANC, which was banned at the time, were also suspected of drug dealing to make money to fight the regime.

This journalist’s book, Clash of the Cartels: Unmasking the global drug kingpins stalking South Africa, references a 1987 affidavit by Vuyo Ndzeku, who once smuggled drugs and later became an aviation industry businessman.

Ndzeku’s 1987 affidavit stated: “A lot of the Mandrax dealers are people working for the ANC and the money they make on these tablets is used to buy arms… A lot of cars get stolen in South Africa, which are then taken to Zambia and swapped for tablets. These cars are used by the ANC.”

Last week, though, in response to broader Daily Maverick questions, ANC spokesperson Mahlengi Bhengu-Motsiri emphatically denied that any drug dealing ever took place, saying such insinuations were “sick” and that the “lies” had no place in South Africa in 2024.

Although anti-apartheid fighters had been involved in smuggling weapons and crucial documents, she said, they had not been involved in illicit drugs that could “destroy the lives of South Africans”.

Meanwhile, Ndzeku’s affidavit had also referred to an individual known as “Iboo”.  This was the alias of Ibrahim Sildky Yusuf, a businessman originally from Zambia who operated in South Africa (and who may have had ties to Goswami). Yusuf was reportedly on the Zambian police’s radar on suspicion of Mandrax dealing in the 1980s.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Vuyo Sipho Ndzeku’s Zondo testimony is among the most bizarre delivered at the commission

In October 2010, the Mail & Guardian reported that it “appears Yusuf’s relocation to South Africa was eased by the contacts he had made with ANC figures in exile in Zambia”.

Yusuf was in business with Billy Ma­­setlha, a former South African National Intelligence Agency head widely viewed as an ally of Zuma. Based on condolence messages on social media, Yusuf died in 2021, and Masetlha died in 2023.

Ndzeku, the source of some of the Zambia-linked claims, cropped up again. In 2020 he testified at the State Capture Commission, which delved into widespread corruption that happened mostly when Zuma was head of state.

Ndzeku did not come across well at the commission, often responding to questions, including about allegedly corrupt payments relating to South African Airways, that he did not remember.

Masterminded murder

As for Goswami, after time in Zambia and South Africa, he subsequently popped up in Dubai, where he was handed a life sentence and jailed in 1997 for dealing in Mandrax.

But Goswami was released from prison in 2012 and headed to Kenya, where the law again caught up with him.

In 2017 he was extradited from there to the US along with other suspects, including two Kenyan brothers, Baktash Akasha Abdalla and Ibrahim Akasha Abdalla, better known as the Akashas. They were accused of running a global drug-dealing empire that involved the US and South Africa.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Can South Africa close the net on lethal narcotics trade linked to web of global crime?

Baktash was jailed in the US for 25 years in 2019 and Ibrahim was sentenced to 23 years’ imprisonment in 2020.

Goswami, meanwhile, admitted that, together with the Akashas, he was dominant in South Africa’s drug trade – and that they masterminded a murder in this country to reinforce that position.

According to Goswami, a rival trafficker’s sidekick known as Pinky was shot 32 times somewhere in South Africa in about 2014 “so we can put an impression in South African drug market [that] we are not here to play”.

Goswami testified about this and more in a US court in 2019.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Goswami’s SA mandrax secrets

What makes that international trafficking case remarkable – and casts South Africa in a rather dubious light – is that it is lodged in the US even though it largely focuses on South Africa’s drug trade.

And South Africa has not acted against Goswami, despite him openly talking about how he was involved in trafficking via this country for years and tried to dominate the drug scene.

‘Spy’ from Pakistan

Another accused fits into this matrix. The US alleged that Muhammad Asif Hafeez, known as the Sultan, was working with Goswami and the Akashas. Hafeez, from Pakistan, was based in the UK.

In 2019, Vrye Weekblad reported that Goswami also alleged, in sealed grand jury testimony in the US, that members of the Gupta family were involved in money laundering on behalf of Hafeez.

According to the report, Goswami alleged that Gupta associate Salim Essa had introduced him to the Guptas and that he then, in turn, connected the Guptas to Hafeez. Essa denied it.

(That same year, 2019, the US sanctioned Essa, as well as Ajay, Atul and Rajesh Gupta, with the US Treasury Department describing them as “members of a significant corruption network in South Africa”.)

As for Hafeez, he was reportedly extradited from the UK to the US last year.

Last month, Emmanuel Ruchat, a European lawyer who has represented Hafeez, confirmed to Daily Maverick that he was indeed detained in the US.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Pakistani ‘spy’-accused in major SA-linked drugs case stumbles in bid to halt UK extradition to US

Conveying Hafeez’s replies to Daily Maverick’s questions, Ruchat said Hafeez denied knowing the Guptas and if Goswami made such claims “it is wrong”.

US government witness

Back to Goswami. US court papers point to what has happened to him.

A 2019 pre-hearing US government submission in the drug trafficking case says: “The government will present the testimony of Vicky Goswami … who is now a cooperating witness for the government.”

This shows that Goswami became a state witness, meaning the US has access to potentially explosive secrets about South Africa’s drug trade.

In February, Daily Maverick twice asked the US’s Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), via its public affairs email address, what had happened to Goswami and Hafeez, but no response was received.

Previously, in July 2021, when Daily Maverick asked the DEA what had happened to Goswami, it responded: “We are unable to comment until the case is fully adjudicated.” This implied the case was continuing.

‘Wanted accused’

Daily Maverick has also established that Goswami, despite becoming a US government witness in the drug trafficking case, is wanted in India.

According to a 2019 US Attorney's Office press statement for the Southern District of New York, connected to that trafficking case was a raid at a factory in Solapur, India, around 2014. Eighteen tonnes of ephedrine (used to make crystal methamphetamine, or tik) was seized from it.

Documents from the Bombay High Court dated 2022, relating to that case, said Goswami was a “wanted accused”.

Papers from September last year from the Gujarat High Court refer to Goswami as being in a “foreign country”.

Alleged terrorist Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar as pictured on an Interpol red notice.

‘Global terrorist’

Meanwhile, during previous US court proceedings focused on Goswami in the drug case, another global crime kingpin, also from India and with links to South Africa, was referenced – Dawood Ibrahim. And again, political claims circle this arena.

Ibrahim, who heads a sprawling international crime syndicate known as D-Company, was under investigation in the early 1990s for Mandrax trafficking across Africa, this country included.

D-Company, involved in crimes ranging from trafficking and terrorist attacks to extortion, has a presence in South Africa.

There were suspicions in 2003 that Ibrahim had been present at a cricket match in Gauteng along with Jackie Selebi, who was once South Africa’s national police commissioner and was later convicted of having a corrupt relationship with a drug dealer.

Also in 2003, the US had labelled Ibrahim a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist”.

Last year Daily Maverick reported that Gold Mafia, a four-part series by Al Jazeera’s investigative unit, placed Ibrahim in this country while Zuma was still head of state, and in related circles.

Read more in Daily Maverick: ‘Gold Mafia’ whistle-blower places wanted terrorist Dawood Ibrahim in Gupta, Zuma circles

Mohamed Khan, also known as Mo Dollars, was authorised to launder cigarette mogul Simon Rudland’s money. (Screengrab: Al Jazeera)

It was alleged that a South African, Mohamed Khan, also known as “Mo Dollars”, was a money launderer who knew Zuma so well that the former president had been to his home.

It was also alleged that Khan managed companies and laundered money for Gupta family members, and that he was implicated in the Sasfin Bank scandal, which now involves the taxman claiming R4.8-billion damages relating to dirty tobacco money.

Khan’s brother Dawood asserted in Gold Mafia that he started working with him in 2011 and around that time there was a meeting at a Sandton hotel. He claimed that Ibrahim was among those present.

Khan, in the documentary, said the allegations against him were false and he had never met Zuma, the Guptas or Ibrahim.

The Guptas did not respond in the documentary, and it was in reply to questions about this that Manyi told Daily Maverick: “You are fishing in a desert.”

In the international drug case playing out in the US, when Goswami was testifying there in 2019, he was asked about Ibrahim and whether he had agreed to assassinate Ibrahim for India’s intelligence agency. Goswami was not made to answer. Ibrahim is still listed as a wanted terrorist. DM

This is the first instalment in a three-part Where are they Now series about SA's drug dons. This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R29.