Police warn of poaching war

May 19 2010 at 06:40AM

By Caryn Dolley and Luvuyo Mjekula

Police fear a war has erupted between rival poachers and gangsters in Pearly Beach after residents killed two suspected gang members believed to have robbed poachers.

Another two have been injured, a poacher and a friend of the suspected gangsters, allegedly from the 28s.

Police say the violence erupted after three poachers were robbed of perlemoen and residents suspected the gangsters were behind the attack.

A group had then gone to the suspected gangsters' home, had allegedly attacked them and set their shack alight with them in it.

Thirteen people were arrested and are expected to appear in the Gansbaai Magistrate's Court tomorrow. Twelve face double murder and arson charges, while the 13th suspect faces an attempted murder charge.

Police said more arrests were imminent.

Late last year, President Jacob Zuma, after a visit to Hawston, said he would urgently consider lifting the ban on perlemoen harvesting, but that the poaching had to end first.

The ban had been imposed due to dwindling perlemoen resources.

On Tuesday Mike Tannet of Seawatch in the Overstrand said competition between poachers was getting stronger as perlemoen became scarcer.

He said descriptions of Monday's attacks suggested that rival poaching groups were fighting.

While there were no other reports of fighting between rival groups, Tannet said at the end of last year three poachers had drowned in two separate incidents on the same night.

This had raised suspicions and some had questioned whether rival poachers had played a role in the drownings.

On Tuesday night, when the Cape Times visited the Eluxolweni informal settlement where Monday's attack took place, community members were getting ready to meet in a local hall to discuss the situation.

The Cape Times team could not attend the meeting as the police advised it to leave the area as it was too volatile.

Earlier, a shocked resident described how he watched one of the two attacked men die in front of his door.

He said he had heard screaming and shouts for help late on Monday. When he looked outside, he saw a group of residents watching the house in front of his burn down. The resident was so shaken he said he wanted to move away from the area.

Another neighbour said the two men who burnt to death, and who cannot be named until their families have been informed, had apparently not been involved in any criminal activities. She said the one was 24 years old and from Napier while the other was in his 40s and from Cape Town.

The neighbour said both had moved into the settlement about a year ago and did maintenance work at a nearby caravan park. Yesterday, mounds of debris were all that remained of their shack.
A charred dog's carcass, a panga and a broken scale could be seen between the blackened mounds.

Gansbaai police spokesman Christian le Roux said the violence had been sparked by an attack on three poachers.

On Monday afternoon, the three had been walking through a bushy area from Pearly Beach with bags of perlemoen. Three gunmen had been lying in wait in the bushes and, as the poachers walked by, Le Roux said the men had started shooting at them.

"The suspects then got hold of the perlemoen and ran away," he said.

One of the poachers, a 21-year-old, was wounded in his left leg and rushed to hospital and Le Roux said officers had, managed to track down and arrest a 24-year-old in connection with the shooting
He said that, when Eluxolweni residents heard about the attack, they suspected 28s gangsters were behind it and that evening had gone to the shack where they believed the gangsters lived. A group had stormed the shack in which the two men and a woman were sitting.

Le Roux said they stabbed and shot at the three and, during the commotion, the woman was shot, stabbed in the left leg and hit over the head with an unknown object as she was escaping.

She managed to get out of the shack.

The group then left the shack and Le Roux said they set it alight with the two men still inside.

Le Roux said the woman who had been injured in the attack was in hospital on Tuesday.

Twelve residents had been arrested for the incident, and a licensed 9mm pistol was confiscated and would be sent for ballistic testing.

Le Roux said that, while gangsterism was not a major problem in the area, poaching was. He said no other conflict between gangsters and poachers had been reported there.

On Tuesday, Shaheen Moola, a fisheries management consultant with the company Feike, said the Gansbaai area was known for the "massive amounts of poaching" that took place there.

He said Chinese triads, who channelled perlemoen to Asia, were known to operate in the area and gangsters there were also known to dabble in perlemoen.

Moola said that gangs "inevitably recruited perlemoen poachers" in coastal areas including Gansbaai.

"They buy the perlemoen from the poachers and then trade with the triads," he said.

Moola said the core component of the drug tik, which was in demand in the province and sold by gangsters, was ephedrine.

"China produces ephedrine and (the gangsters) swop the perlemoen for this," he said.

Pearly Beach Ratepayers' Association chairman Dudley Coetzee said it was an open and accepted fact that poachers operated in the area.

"It takes place on a regular basis and in broad daylight ... The gangs also operate here and that's where the problems come in," he said.

Marine and Coastal Management spokeswoman Carol Moses said the fisheries branch of the Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries Department knew about the "alleged 'poacher-on-poacher' violence".

She said, aside from teams of fisheries inspectors, military veterans had also been deployed to combat poaching.

This article was originally published on page 1 of Cape Times on May 19, 2010