South African police have uncovered a major crystal meth laboratory on the border with Zimbabwe and rounded up several foreign nationals including two Mexicans, they said Friday.
The operation follows a series of drugs busts involving Mexican nationals over the past months that have led authorities to suspect Latin American cartels are expanding into Africa.
Security forces raided the laboratory late Thursday and seized drugs and equipment worth around 600 million rand ($37 million), they said in a statement.
They arrested two Mexican nationals, two Zimbabweans and a Malawian.
The operation was hidden on a farm near the northern border town of Musina in Limpopo Province and "exposed an alleged sophisticated, industrial-scale operation", the statement said.
Limpopo's top cop, Lieutenant-General Jan Scheepers, told local broadcaster SABC he expected "more arrests" and believed the operation was linked to organised crime syndicates.
"So far, what we could determine is they are sending the drugs which are manufactured here throughout our country and also to our neighbouring countries," he said.
Asked about any link to Latin American cartels, a police spokesman told AFP: "Nationality alone does not establish a cartel link."
Police in May uncovered a multi-million-dollar methamphetamine laboratory and arrested 11 suspects, including four Mexicans, on a remote farm northwest of Johannesburg.
Authorities estimated the value of the drugs produced there at around 250 million rand.
In September, police raided another clandestine lab in a rural area about 250 kilometres (155 miles) southeast of Johannesburg, seizing methamphetamine worth 350 million rand and arresting five Mexican nationals.
South Africa is a major consumer of meth and the market for the drug is growing in neighbouring countries and elsewhere in the region, according to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.
The Geneva-based agency said in a July 2025 report that drugs labs in South Africa and Mozambique "are emblematic of the expansion of Latin American cartels into Africa and cooperation with local criminal groups".
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