FedEx offers assurances after Swazi drug bust

James Hall
MBABANE - Officials from Federal Express's Swaziland operations have been forthcoming with what they know about a FedEx employee involved in a highly publicised dagga bust at the kingdom's Oshoek border post with South Africa.
"At this point, we honestly don't know if one of our trucks was used in the transportation of illegal drugs," said marketing manager Dale Johnston. "What we do know is that no customers' deliveries were affected, because our tracking system would have alerted us."
The FedEx employee is a popular local soccer star, Aaron Tsabedze, whose arrest by South African police made headlines last week. He had cleared Swazi customs at Oshoek en route to Johannesburg, but was apprehended with reportedly thousands of rands worth of high-grade Swazi dagga on the South African side of the border post.
Johnston said the company had yet to determine whether a private car or FedEx vehicle had been used for the drug transport attempt, but she confirmed that if the latter was the case, and any customer deliveries were on the truck, negotiations would have ensued with South African police authorities to have the items released.
Tsabedze had been rumoured to be in the drug delivery businesses at a time when Swazi soccer was racked with drug scandals, including the arrest of two top football executives this month on drug charges.