By De Wet Potgieter

The discovery of another two mutilated corpses in the Kruger National Park this week brought the grim total of critically endangered rhinos killed in South Africa's nature reserves this year to 115.

That is only five short of the total of 120 recorded in the whole of 2009, a figure that already sounded alarm bells among conservationists, who have warned for decades the species could be heading for extinction.

Even more disturbingly for law enforcement, the spike in rhino killings comes while the South African authorities continue to unravel what they believed was the country's major poaching syndicate in an ongoing series of prosecutions initiated with the conviction of three relatively low-level syndicate members earlier this year.

"You knock one group of poachers out and the next team are there to take over from them," Rusty Hustler, head of counter-poaching in the North West Province told The Sunday Independent in Rustenburg this week.

Now the anti-poaching authorities are eyeing what they believe is an even more extensive syndicate, allegedly headed up by the son of a prominent South African mining magnate. Identified alleged associates include two well-known game veterinarians, who are suspected of providing dart guns and supplying controlled tranquilliser drugs for use on poaching expeditions.

According to Hustler, the dart guns are used in order to incapacitate the animals before the horn is removed, since horn taken from a live rhino fetches a higher price on far Eastern markets. Only after the horn has been cut off is the hapless animal finally dispatched.

The Sunday Independent's anti-poaching sources estimate the new syndicate could be responsible for as much as 70 percent of current rhino poaching in South Africa.

Characteristically the syndicate uses military-issue R4 rifles in killing the animals, though, in some cases believed to be connected with the network .303 hunting rifles have been used.

Operating from a farm in Limpopo, the syndicate has been linked to recent poaching incidents at the Rietvlei Dam in Pretoria, as well as a spate of rhino killings over the past two months in reserves outside Krugersdorp. Names and details are known to The Sunday Independent but have been withheld in deference to police investigations.

In common with the alleged new syndicate, the syndicate currently being taken through the courts is mainly made up of white farmers, many with a background in the apartheid-era security forces.

Having plea-bargained in exchange for testimony against syndicate kingpins, three low-level members of the earlier syndicate were convicted in 2007 - Kalahari farmers, Gideon van Deventer and his older brother Nic, sentenced to 10 and five years imprisonment respectively, though part of both sentences was suspended in view of their turning state witness. Their accomplice Pieter Swart was given a fine of R50 000 or 12 months in prison.

Now the saga is set to unfold in further prosecutions in October. The three convicts will testify against six alleged syndicate kingpins, charged with racketeering, money laundering, contravention of provincial conservation Acts, and theft, among other offences. Charges have also been brought in terms of civil aviation legislation in connection with a light aircraft allegedly used to spot rhinos for poaching in nature reserves.

The accused in the October trial include two safari operators, Clayton Fletcher of Sandhurst Safaris and Gert Saaiman of Saaiman Hunting Safaris, game farmer and lion breeder, Pieter Swart, along with Gauteng private investigator Johan le Grange, as well as Andre, younger brother of the convicted Van Deventers.

Anti-poaching investigators told The Sunday Independent global patterns in the illicit trade in rhino horn had shifted in recent years with Vietnamese end-user syndicates supplanting Chinese in the smuggling and distribution of rhino horn in the Far East - where it is believed to increase sexual potency in males. Though, commonly, the contraband continues to be packaged whole for smuggling by "mules", investigators said these days it was becoming increasingly common for the horn to be sewn into clothing in powder form to frustrate detection.

In March, a Vietnamese national was arrested at O R Tambo Airport carrying six rhino horns in his handbag. This was followed, on June 9, by the arrest of a second Vietnamese national with seven horns in his hand-luggage, and on June 11, as the World Cup was kicking off, by the detention of a further two Vietnamese nationals with 18 horns between them.

"Poaching has become even worse than it was in the late 1990s and we will have to take extreme measures to fight this problem at the very level that the syndicates operate," said one investigator, who works undercover in the poaching environment.

He said it was particularly disturbing that the majority of identified South African kingpins in the international smuggling rings were respected local figures with conservationist profiles.

Far Eastern buyers pay poachers around $2 000/kg (15 000) for rhino horn, though it fetches many times that amount as a far-Eastern aphrodisiac.

The population of white rhinos on the African continent is currently estimated at around 20 000. The black rhino remains critically endangered with a total population in the region of only 4 000.

South Africa has yet to pass comprehensive legislation in the fight against the threatened extinction of the rhinoceros. In Limpopo, for instance, rhino poaching carries a mandatory R250 000 fine or 15 year jail sentence, while, the north West is more lenient, imposing a fine of only R50 000, and 12 months' imprisonment.

But, according to the North West's Rusty Hustler, moves are afoot to establish a new National Wildlife Crime Reaction Unit. Ken Maggs, head of Kruger National Parks anti-poaching unit, and Rod Potter from KZN are part of the unit.

Detectives and experts from the polices' organised crime unit, the Hawks, the Asset Forfeiture Unit, the NPA and Interpol, would be seconded to this new unit, Hustler said.


This article was originally published on page 8 of The Sunday Independent on June 27, 2010