About three years ago, Agnes Masogange and her companion Melissa Edward were arrested at Africa’s biggest and busiest airport O.R. Tambo International Airport in Kempton Park, Gauteng, South Africa.

The two were caught trying to smuggle 180 Kilograms of a vital Methamphetamine (Meth) ingredient worth about 34 Million Kshs. The substance in question was Ephedrine, a precursor chemical in the making of meth which forms the drug using a chemical reduction process. (Using anhydrous ammonia and lithium metal in the reaction, they remove ephedrine's hydroxyl group to form meth since the two chemicals have a structural similarity.)

Lucky for her, smuggling ingredients instead of the drug itself  holds a lesser jail term and so after  spending two months in prison, a judge at Kempton Park court fined her about 1.2 Million Kshs for her offence.

Her arrest came a year after the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released a report connecting Tanzania to the ‘smack track’ which is infamous Afghanistan-Pakistan-Iran-Indian Ocean-East Africa heroin route.

Tanzania was named as a major transit point for the trafficking of drugs in Africa alongside its neighbour Kenya which was also a shipment point for Afghan heroin, Mandrax from India and China and cocaine from Latin America.

In 2016, the United Nations body released another report stating that out of these drugs that pass the East African region, 2.5 Million tonnes of heroin are consumed annually by East Africans with most of the region’s users found in Tanzania.

And that is probably why Tanzania and Kenya are cracking the whip on drug users, barons and peddlers with the recent extradition of the notorious Akasha brothers marking a huge milestone in the war against the narcotics trade.

In a bid to curb the problem, Tanzania’s President John Pombe Magufuli ordered the arrest and prosecution of those involved in the drug trade regardless of which rank they hold in the country.

To show how serious he was, he even decreed that if his wife Janeth was caught up in the drug trade she shouldn’t be spared.

Following this decree, Tanzanian official’s went in for the big fish; summoning and  arresting stars like Wema Sepetu, T.I.D, Idris Sultan, Vanessa Mdee, Nay Wa Mitego, Ray C, Clouds FM’s media director Ruge Mutabaha, and video vixen Tunda  over drug use and trafficking.

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The latest person to be arrested is Agnes Masogange after the 1 month drug bust caught 349 suspects.

Speaking to the press, the head of police in Dar es Salaam Simon Sirro said that Agnes had been taken to a government chemist to find out whether she was using drugs. Later, in the company of other suspects she would be taken to court.

Masogange arrested

This arrest came after people complained that Agnes should not have been spared in the drug bust with some even going ahead to claim that she had an affair with Dar es Salaam’s Regional Commissioner Paul Makonda and that is why she was spared.

Claims which she denied saying that she was born again and had never seen Paul Makonda in real life.