Police find 59 dagga parcels hidden in car panels, court moves to seize the vehicle

Police found 59 parcels of dagga packed into hidden compartments built into both sides of a bakkie they stopped in Mahamba, and the High Court has now moved to take the vehicle itself.

The preservation order, issued on 2 November 2026, covers a black Opel Corsa Utility valued at an estimated R100 000. The Hawks’ Priority Crime Specialised Investigation unit and the National Prosecuting Authority’s Asset Forfeiture Unit brought the application.

The case dates to 9 August 2026, at about 18:30, when officers on crime prevention duties intercepted the vehicle. Police say the driver, an adult Swazi national named in the SAPS statement as Wandile Mkhathswa, was the only person in the vehicle.

According to the police account, officers asked to search the bakkie and were given permission to do so. They detected a strong smell of dagga, and the inspection that followed turned up the parcels, wrapped in black and transparent plastic, inside compartments concealed in the vehicle’s body structure.

Police say the driver admitted the dagga was his and told them he was taking it to Pietermaritzburg for distribution and sale. He was arrested for dealing in dagga. The drugs and the vehicle were seized.

The preservation order is a civil step, separate from the criminal case. It is the mechanism the state uses to hold an asset while it argues the asset should be forfeited, and the police statement frames it as part of the effort to ensure crime does not pay and to put the tools of trafficking beyond use.

A bakkie with compartments built into its bodywork is not improvised transport, and the police statement describes the concealment as sophisticated. The order is the state’s attempt to put that vehicle permanently out of circulation rather than return it to its owner while the prosecution runs. No trial date has been given.