R20 million drug bust on house opposite Alberton school

 10 May, 2016 

Cocaine. File photo.
Image by: Gallo Images/Thinkstock

Drugs and chemicals worth R20 million were seized by Gauteng police during an overnight raid on a house in Johannesburg’s south on Tuesday.

The house is located opposite Glenview Primary School in the quiet residential suburb of Brackenhurst‚ Alberton.

The raid began minutes before midnight.

Police stormed the house and cornered two Nigerian men aged 36 and 38‚ who were found sleeping.

A neighbour who spoke on condition of anonymity said the owner arrived in their area three years ago and told them that he had bought the house for his family‚ but they never saw his family.

An employee at the primary school said he had long suspected the house after he saw suspicious chemical containers last year.

The man claimed he usually saw people going in and out of the house in different vehicles.

He has appealed to police to continue raiding the area to rid other drug dealers.

Hawks spokeswoman Captain Carol Molamu said the arrested Nigerian men will face charges of possession and dealing in drugs in the Palm Ridge Magistrate's Court soon.

Molamu said they were tracing the owner of the house and have involved the Asset Forfeiture Unit to establish how the house was accessed by the drug dealers.

In December 2014‚ Philip Nsofor‚ 40‚ who called himself "the Lion of Alberton"‚ was jailed for an effective 30 years. His sentencing followed a six-year investigation.

The Times reported Nsofor had arrived in South Africa illegally from Nigeria in 2002 and began dealing in drugs from a cellphone shop he owned in Alberton North‚ and from a nearby informal settlement - becoming one of Johannesburg's biggest drug dealers. He supplied cocaine to Alberton‚ Germiston and Robertsham
.