By IPS Correspondents
KIGALI, Jun 6 1997 (IPS)

The streets in the Rwandan capital city are rapidly becoming the centre of a growing trade in marijuana, heroin and cocaine.

The main target of the trade are young people living in the urban centres, mainly in the low income suburbs of Biryogo, Gakinjiro, Muhima, Camp Zaire, Kimisagara, and Kabagari, reports the monthly army newspaper ‘Ingabo’ (The Shield).

According to the police, drugs like cocaine and heroin often come into the country through Magerwa, the in-land port at Gikondo. Truckers coming into the country from East Africa, the police add, smuggle in hard drugs which find their way to the streets.

“I had wrongly thought that the use of heroin and cocaine was an epidemic of Westerners, but today these drugs are consumed and sold in this city of ours,” says an officer in the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) here.

Juma Nzabandora, a Rwandan journalist who has investigated the increase in heroin and marijuana consumption in Kigali, says that some young people have formed sects around the use of drugs. Most of the city’s youth, he adds, are not aware of the dangers of drugs.

Before using the drug marijuana, for example, young people often recite an incantation in Swahili: “Ganja Mugo, nikuvute usinivute wewe ndiye baba we ndie mama”, which means “Ganja, Mugo, I consume(smoke) you, please don’t harm me, you are my father and you are a mother”.

Nzabandora says the youth believe this saying protects them from any harm. And according to CID officials, ‘Ganja’ and ‘Mugo’ are the code names used on the streets for marijuana and heroin.

When the present Rwandan government came to power three years ago, it began its campaign against the use and growing of marijuana.

Over 20 hectares of cannabis were allegedly planted in the heart of the Southwestern Nyungwe natural forest by senior government officials in the former regime of the late President Juvenal Habyarimana.

Many of the inmates at Nyamirambo Police Station here are teenagers who are not only users, but also traffickers of drugs.

Seventeen-year-old Alexandrine Umwari, who was arrested a few months ago, says she has been hooked on heroin for over six years. She has stolen money and household items from her family, and eventually turned to prostitution to support her habit.

Several of those held at Nyamirambo reveal that often the suppliers of the hard drugs are foreigners from Senegal, Mali and Cote d’Ivoire. But the trade also has attracted Rwandans who are searching for get-rich-quick schemes.

“This is a very expensive drug,” says one woman involved in the trade. “In some cases one gramme is sold at 20 U.S. Dollars.”

The Kigali City prosecutor, Emmanuel Rukangira, says that it had been hard to enforce drug regulations in the country. Dentention facilities were often crowded with those involved in the genocide, and arrested drug offenders were let go, he says.

Rukangira says the authorities will now apply tough laws for drug offenders, and a new detention centre has been created at Kimironko, on the outskirts of Kigali.

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