. Nevertheless, it is likely that the 2015 figure of 75,000 people injecting heroin and 110 000 smoking the drug has grown significantly. This puts South Africa at risk of following drug patterns in sub-Saharan Africa, which is expected to have 20 million users of hard drugs by 2040.
Tanzanian networks have played a pivotal role in developing the South African heroin market. They make wholesale deliveries of the drug to South African gangs in Cape Town and Nelson Mandela Bay, and distribute it to a network of dealers in Johannesburg and Tshwane. The cash-based nature of the drug business is a lubricant for low-level police corruption. In Cape Town, dealers in gang-controlled neighbourhoods told ENACT researchers that police visit their selling points for small cash bribes. Interviewees in Tshwane spoke of corrupt junior police confiscating drugs and selling them to other dealers.