Police late this afternoon swooped on a dagga plantation barely outside of the western outskirts of Pretoria. The land apparently belongs to the provincial government and the dagga will be destroyed as soon as possible. No arrests were made.
The plantation, barely 50m from a major road connecting Pretoria to the North West Province, had plants some reaching more than 2m high and is growing undisturbed on about 12 square kilometres. Police started gathering intelligence on the site late last year.
The police’s Tummi Golding says they are worried about the land itself because they want to investigate further who the land belongs to. Golding says if the land does not belong to anybody it will go back to government. The area is informally used to grow vegetables and maize, but the land, usually bustling with people working in their crops, grew eerily deserted as police arrived.
A police helicopter was also used to do an aerial survey of the dagga field. The police investigation will continue but the dagga will be destroyed as soon as possible. Captain Meshack Mthembi of the police’s Forensic Science Laboratory’s Drug Section says they will use a special kind of weed killer which will slowly kill off the plant material. Samples of the dagga plants were also collected to be tested.
- SABC
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