Killing for Profit: Exposing the Illegal Rhino Horn Trade (42 page)

Tourists visiting the Kruger were threatened. Staff members who dared to go to work were intimidated. Insiders I spoke to were scathing. Many rangers, they said, particularly those who had been in the park for a number of years, had ‘got too comfortable. They’re
slapgat
, badly disciplined, don’t want to work and don’t won’t to go out into the bush.’ They were a drain on morale.

Frequently, in the course of my research, I heard tales of field rangers flagrantly ignoring orders or going on patrol armed with camping chairs and brightly coloured gas cookers. They’d heat the food on gas stoves, ignoring the fact that the smells and smoke were a dead giveaway to the men they were supposedly hunting. They refused to work overtime. And they would camp close to roadways so that they could quickly head home the moment their shifts ended.

Maggs, who argues that there ‘is no better substitute to stopping a poacher than a well-motivated, well-equipped field ranger operating on foot’, says, ‘It would be crazy for me to sit here and tell you the strike had no effect. If you take away your ears and eyes in the bush for any length of time … it is going to have an impact on detection and reaction.’

During the strike and its immediate aftermath, SANParks steadfastly refused to release figures of the number of rhinos lost. It was only in June 2012, with the minister’s release of detailed poaching statistics for Kruger, that the impact became clear. Of the 149 rhinos lost between January and June, 102 were killed during the strike.

Maggs admits that there is some residual damage to levels of trust between park management and rangers. ‘You can’t one day be up to your armpits in
anti-poaching, with a rifle, gun and knives, lying in 40 °C temperatures in the bush and the next day be toyi-toying outside a gate, interfering with tourists and kicking cars, and then expect the trust relationship to build.’

And then there’s corruption. ‘At the prices being paid for rhino horn, corruption will permeate everything,’ Maggs says. ‘It is in the police, it’s in the army, it’s in the park personnel, and we don’t believe for one moment that we’re exempt. We’ll fight it where we can, but we must understand that it will be there. What is important is how you deal with it when you find it. Do you put it under the covers? Where we’ve discovered corruption, we’ve acted and will continue to act.’

In February 2012, two field guides, a ranger and a traffic officer were arrested in the Kruger in connection with a poaching incident in which two rhino were killed.

The following month, a former policeman, ‘Big Joe’ Nyalunga, was arrested in the town of Hazyview in Mpumalanga. Four rhino horns and a quantity of dagga (marijuana) were seized. The horns are believed to have been poached near the Pretoriuskop section of the Kruger. Seven Mozambicans with ties to Nyalunga were also arrested. A search of three properties owned by Nyalunga, and one he rented, led police to more than sixty hunting knives and pangas – some still bloodied – night-sight equipment, silencers for .375 and .458 hunting rifles, stolen laptops and television sets, and an electronic money-counter. Two steel trunks found in one of the houses were broken open. Inside police discovered more than R5 million in cash. A camera belonging to Nyalunga was also recovered. On it were photographs that appeared to show a terrified, handcuffed man being tortured. The man’s identity is not known and police fear he may be dead.

At the time of his arrest, Nyalunga was out on bail pending his appearance in a money-laundering case. It stemmed from his arrest in December 2011 after he was stopped by police on the N4 highway near Middelburg. Three million rand in cash was found in the boot of his Range Rover, a vehicle he had bought six months before and which cost R640 000. Nyalunga had paid for it in cash.

Inside the Range Rover, police forensics experts found traces of animal material, later identified through DNA analysis as having originated from a
white rhino. As a policeman, Nyalunga had been stationed at Komatipoort, a border town just south of the Kruger. He had abruptly resigned in 2009 and left under a cloud after becoming the subject of investigations into a criminal syndicate that smuggled cigarettes and stolen cars across the Mozambican border. In 2010 he was linked to the murder of a man who was beaten to death in Hazyview. The body was eventually recovered from the Inyaka Dam near Bosbokrand. The corpse’s feet had been bound together with a length of wire and weighted down with a rock.

For his bail hearing in May 2012, Nyalunga was taken to court in an armoured police personnel carrier, surrounded by a phalanx of riot cops armed with R5 rifles. ‘We received information from a reliable source that Nyalunga might attempt to escape,’ the police investigating officer, Swys Vermaak, told the magistrate. Nyalunga had also tried to smuggle a cellphone into his cell, Vermaak said, and police investigating him were warned that he planned to have them killed.

Says Maggs: ‘Increasingly you’re seeing armed robbers, cash-in-transit gangs, car hijackers and ATM bombers shifting towards rhino poaching. It’s lucrative and the risks are a lot less. If, for instance, you carry out a cash-intransit robbery, going there with fourteen or fifteen people all armed with AK-47s and assorted firepower, there is a good chance you’ll run into the police’s special task force and get the hell shot out of you.’

He’s right. The crackdown, particularly on cash-in-transit robberies, has been bloody and ruthlessly efficient. A few years ago, I remember rushing to the scene of a failed heist near the Carousel Casino in North West. At the time, the crimes were a dime a dozen. The papers were filled with horrific tales of security guards being executed, blown up or burnt alive by gangs determined to breach the armoured doors of the cash vans.

In this instance, the gunmen drove into a trap. Someone had ratted. The police task force laid an ambush and sealed off the road minutes before the heist was due to take place. A cash van became a Trojan horse. Seconds after the gang made their move, they were met by a hail of bullets. A police helicopter appeared in the sky.

Within minutes, the crackle of semi-automatic rifle-fire ceased. The carnage was spread out over a kilometre. A dozen bullet-riddled bodies, splashed
with blood, and torn bits of flesh lay scattered over the road and in nearby mealie fields. Spent cartridge casings littered the ground. Grey, dead fingers clutched at the triggers of AK-47 assault rifles. Some had been mown down as they ran. In the weeks and months that followed, more gangs were ambushed and intercepted. Rarely was anyone ever taken alive.

‘So, given the risks, is it worth it?’ Maggs asks. ‘Now they don’t even have to get their feet wet. If they arrange for someone to go out and shoot a rhino and bring them the horn, they’re going make hundreds of thousands of rands. The only thing they’ll have to do illegally is buy the horn from a local group of poachers, transport it and sell it. It is low risk and, even if they get caught, with some of the sentences being meted out, it’s not really a deterrent. Some of the guys we’ve arrested have had millions of rands in their possession. How do you fight that kind of money?’

And despite various efforts, including the much-vaunted deployment of South African Defence Force soldiers in March 2011 as part of ‘Operation Corona’, little seems to be stemming the tide. Maggs concedes that operations targeting poachers cannot be sustained indefinitely.

‘I don’t think we’re going to have an option,’ he says. ‘We must possibly be looking at supplying the demand legally. How we are going to do that needs to be addressed. We will need to fully understand the dynamics of trade and the demand.’

‘But,’ he cautions, ‘supplying rhino horn won’t solve our problems overnight, because there are such powerful syndicates and individuals involved. Do you think they’ll just give up?’

It’s just after two on a Sunday afternoon in Massingir in southern Mozambique. Ice-cold 2M beers in brown bottles are being served under the thatched roof of an open-air shebeen on the town’s main road. The man sitting opposite me in the purple tracksuit is drunk out of his mind and extolling the virtues of the porridge they make in his home village. Occasionally, manic giggles interrupt his slurred monologue. He gives me a high five, his eyes unfocused and rolling in his head.

Next to the drunk man, Jonas Mongwe shoots me a gap-toothed grin. ‘He works across the road at the police station,’ he says. ‘He’s the head of police intelligence in Massingir.’ Mongwe laughs. The purple spy nods emphatically and gives me another high five. Mongwe leans closer and gestures at a man draped over a wooden railing, fondling a young woman. ‘That one … he does poaching. He knows all about the product. Maybe he’ll talk to you.’ He calls out to the man, clearly an acquaintance, and explains what we want. There’s laughter.

‘I’m too drunk to talk,’ the man says, and continues to paw his girlfriend. An old gent in his Sunday best – a neat black suit, brown shoes and a fedora – glances disapprovingly at him. Then the old man looks quickly away, orders a Coke and leaves, walking down the street past Mongwe’s shiny new Toyota Hilux. It’s a double-cab, worth about R300 000, probably more, depending on the extras. I notice it is registered in Mpumalanga province in South Africa.

They say Mongwe is dangerous. There are whispers about his underworld connections, but nothing anyone can prove. Perhaps it’s just idle gossip. He says he’s a businessman. He’s likeable, oozes charm and has an air of quiet authority. In Massingir and the villages around it, everyone seems to know him. Some respect him, others clearly fear him. Mongwe runs a spaza shop and a taxi business. He knows the byways through Kruger well. He’s walked them himself. He knows the poachers too. His cousin was one. Now he lies rotting in the grave alongside Dario Zitha.

‘Once you kill a rhino, you get rich,’ he says. ‘But, at the same time, you die early. I’ve seen many people die … The bosses come from Maputo and they recruit here in the villages, especially among the youth. They say: “We have the money, we have the weapons.” And the youth have a hunger to get rich. The line is endless. They won’t stop. If they [the rangers and army in Kruger] kill Jonas, you can give money to another guy to go in. People are dying, but daily people are going in.’

From Pafuri in the north to Massingir and the towns of Sabie, Magude and Moamba in the south lies the ‘corridor’ separating Mozambique from South Africa and Kruger, Mongwe explains. It is along this ‘corridor’ that the money-men come looking for recruits. ‘The people who are dying are from these rural areas. If someone says, “Let’s go and poach,” they are going to get
thousands and thousands of rands. People get involved so easily … I don’t think it will stop. They can put up a fence or do whatever patrols they want, but if there is a market, people will kill the rhino and people will die.’

How much can a poacher make? ‘A kilo of rhino horn, if I’m not mistaken, is about 400 000
metacais
(R120 000 or $14 500). There are three steps in the market: the rural area, Chokwe, and then Maputo. The prices differ from [those who sell] in Chokwe [to those who sell] in Maputo.’

Sometimes the poachers come into Mongwe’s shop and he listens to them talking. Or late at night, he’ll be approached by someone wanting him to take them to Chokwe urgently. ‘If you come to me urgently at night, I know. I’m short of money, so why not? If you promise to pay me a good price, I’ll take you. If I say no, you will go to other people and they’ll take you. I’ll lose business. I know I’m taking a risk, but money is bread and butter.’

Zachariah bites his lip nervously, eyes flicking from side to side. He’s agreed to talk after some persuading from Mongwe. But it is clear he doesn’t want to be here, in the Mozambican bush along a little-travelled dirt road, talking to outsiders. Not far away is the
Rio Olifantes
, or Elephants River, which runs between Mozambique and South Africa. Distant hills mark the beginning of the Kruger National Park and the point where it dovetails with Mozambique’s
Parque Nacional do Limpopo
.

Zachariah, Mongwe says, was a bit-player in a gang of poachers. Now he catches fish for a living. He’s illiterate and poor. The tennis shoes he’s wearing are cracked and worn. His tracksuit pants are threadbare and filthy. Mongwe translates as he speaks. ‘It’s because I’m poor that I got involved in poaching. I wake up at home with my wife and we just look at each other. There is no bread, there is nothing. I’m the first-born in my family and the breadwinner. I’m looking after my brothers and sisters for school. I have to buy them food, clothes, everything. In the end, instead of stealing a goat from a neighbour, it is better to take the risk of going to the bush to hunt.