Killing for Profit: Exposing the Illegal Rhino Horn Trade

by Rademeyer, Julian

  Published by Zebra Press

  an imprint of Random House Struik (Pty) Ltd Company Reg. No. 1966/003153/07

  Wembley Square, First Floor, Solan Road, Gardens, Cape Town, 8001

  PO Box 1144, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa

  www.zebrapress.co.za

  Publication © Zebra Press 2012

  Text © Julian Rademeyer

  Extract from ‘Run, Rhino, Run’ used with permission by Bud Cockcroft; © Bud Cockcroft

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owners.

  PUBLISHER: Marlene Fryer

  EDITOR: Ronel Richter-Herbert

  PROOFREADER: Jane Housdon

  TEXT DESIGNER: Monique Oberholzer

  INDEXER: Cliff Perusset

  TYPESETTER: Catherine Coetzer

  ISBN: 978 1 77022 334 9 (print)

  ISBN: 978 177022 335 6 (ePub)

  ISBN: 978 1 77022 336 3 (PDF)

  Contents

  Introduction

  1 Crooks’ Corner

  2 The Wiseguy

  3 Apartheid’s Secret

  4 Operation Lock

  5 The Superspy

  6 The Hunters

  7 The ‘Boeremafia’

  8 Johnny the Rat

  9 The Killing

  10 Juju and the ‘Poacher’

  11 Poacher’s Moon

  12 Hard Knocks

  13 The Embassy

  14 Shopping for Rhino Horn in Hanoi

  15 The Kingpin

  Glossary

  Abbreviations and Acronyms

  Acknowledgements

  References

  Index

  For Trish, without whom this book could never have been written

  Introduction

  The Lao People’s Democratic Republic, December 2011

  The sun is setting on a sweltering winter’s day in the Laotian capital, Vientiane. Across a sea of concrete lies the sickly grey Mekong River and, beyond that, a mess of cellphone towers and radio antennas. I climb the stairs of a seedy riverfront bar that reeks of stale cigarettes and alcohol, order an ice-cold quart of Beerlao Lager and find a window seat.

  In the far corner, two sweaty tourists play a game of pool with a bar girl wearing impossibly tight white shorts and a fake smile. The place is starting to fill up with the late-afternoon crowd.

  Nine thousand kilometres from my home in South Africa, I’m nearing the end of a journey. My flight landed a few hours ago. In my backpack is a photograph, an address and the name of a company. In a folder on my laptop are scanned pages of documents detailing illegal shipments of tons of monkeys, snakes, pangolins, ivory tusks, lion bones and rhino horns. Somewhere out there is the man I’m looking for; the kingpin of an international wildlife-trafficking syndicate. I just have to find him.

  Three years ago, I could not have imagined being in that bar or writing this book or quitting my job to do so. Nor could I have imagined where this journey would take me, or the depths of the greed, folly, corruption and depravity that I would encounter.

  Rhinos are unique creatures. They’re a link to a distant prehistoric past, a precious relic of our long-dead history. Ian Player will never forget his first sighting. It was sixty years ago. He was a young game ranger of twenty-five on an anti-poaching patrol. ‘It was a misty morning,’ he recalled recently. ‘I was looking into a patch of bush when two white rhino came looming out of the mist, with steam rising from their flanks and their backs, and hundreds of stable flies hovering above them. Something within me was deeply touched by this primeval scene, and I had an intuitive flash that somehow my life would be bound up with these great prehistoric animals. There was sacredness about their presence …’

  Along with a pioneering wildlife veterinarian, Dr Toni Harthoorn, Player is one of the men credited with saving the southern white rhino from extinction. In the 1960s, the few remaining southern white rhino were confined to the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Game Reserve in South Africa’s Natal province (later KwaZulu-Natal). Between 1961 and 1972, more than 1 100 rhinos were translocated from there to national parks, private reserves and zoos across Africa, Europe, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States in what was called Operation Rhino. Today, as a result of that intervention and the involvement of commercial game farmers, the number of southern white rhinos has increased tenfold, from just 1 800 in 1968 to nearly 19 000 today. Ninety-five per cent of them are found in South Africa. It is the country’s greatest conservation success story. And one that is dangerously close to being unravelled.

  While rhino population growth rates in South Africa still exceed the rate at which the animals are being poached, the ‘tipping point’ is drawing nearer. As I write this, towards the end of 2012, more than 400 rhinos have been killed for their horns this year alone, and projections suggest that as many as 550 could fall victim to poachers’ guns by the year’s end. Since 2008, without fail, a grim new poaching record has been set every year. If the number of killings continues to rise unabated, it is only a matter of time before the tipping point is reached. And, as was seen in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the results will be devastating. The black rhino population, Africa’s other species of rhinoceros, was decimated – cut down from an estimated 100 000 in 1960 to barely 2 400 in 1995. Today their position is dire and, unlike white rhinos, which are considered ‘near threatened’, they remain on the ‘critically endangered’ list.

  ‘Rhino have a particularly plaintive cry,’ Player wrote, ‘which once heard is never forgotten. The screams of agony from rhino that have had their horns chopped off while still alive should reach out into the hearts of all of us.’

  When I first read his words, I had no idea what he meant. Months later I heard those terrible dying cries for the first time. And they have stayed with me ever since.

  Perhaps the greatest irony is that rhinos are being killed for the very things that evolved to offer them a means of defence. On the black markets of Southeast Asia, rhino horn is worth more per kilogram than gold, cocaine, platinum or heroin. It is a product that people are prepared to kill and die for. In Vietnam, it has become a party drug for the wealthy and a panacea for the very sick. And yet, it offers no real scientific benefits. Its value is artificial, founded on myth and propagated by greed.

  But the prices keep rising and the syndicates and the market keep evolving. Since 2009, nearly fifty rhino horns have been stolen in brazen museum robberies, break-ins and smash-and-grabs across Europe. Many of the thefts have been linked to the Rathkeale Rovers, an Irish gang also implicated in robbery, money-laundering, drug dealing, airport heists and trading in counterfeit goods. Even the Russian mob is said to have stolen a mummified woolly rhino, excavated from a Siberian glacier, for its horns. And in the United States, antique dealers and even a rodeo cowboy have pleaded guilty to conspiring to traffic rhino horn trophies that they had bought on auctions across the country. There have been attempted armed robberies of government stockpiles in South Africa. In some instances, cash-in-transit gangs and ‘ATM bombers’ have turned to rhino poaching because of the low risk involved. Poachers have grown steadily more sophisticated. Some use helicopters and veterinary sedatives. Others have amassed arsenals of weaponry. They are adept at corrupting officialdom and subverting the very regulations meant to protect the animals. And all the while, poachers are being killed and rhinos shot on a scale not seen since the ‘Zambezi Valley war’ of the 1980s.

  In South
Africa, a bitter debate is raging over calls for the legalisation of the trade in rhino horn as a last-ditch effort to save the animals. In China, rhinos sold by South Africa to a Chinese pharmaceutical company are penned up in a breeding farm where they regularly have their horns harvested with a purpose-built ‘self-suction living rhinoceros horn-scraping tool’. The company, Long Hui Pharmaceutical, is reportedly pressing local government for permission to legally sell horn it has so far gathered under the auspices of ‘scientific research’.

  I have never considered myself a ‘conservationist’ or an ‘environmentalist’. But like many city-bound South Africans, I have something of a yearning for the escapism offered by the bush; for that magical illusion of the wild. It is something that most of us in South Africa take for granted.

  For close on twenty years, my work as a journalist has led me to focus on people. Rarely have I written about the environment. I’ve written about crime and courts, rape and murder, politics and corruption, war, unrest and famine, atrocities and human rights abuses. I’ve even ‘paparazzied’ a ‘celebrity’ or two. I’ve done stories I’m proud of and many that I would rather forget. There was a time when I thought I’d seen it all, when I sometimes arrogantly believed that nothing could shock or surprise me any more. And then this came along. A story that has angered and gripped me; a story that epitomises the rot that is steadily permeating the heart of South African society. But also a story of a handful of dedicated cops, prosecutors, conservationists and game farmers who, despite minimal resources and overwhelming odds, are trying to fight back.

  I didn’t set out to investigate rhino poaching. In a way, I stumbled on the story. I’d seen the articles in the papers, read the angry comments, heard the cries of outrage, followed the reports of a rhino shot here, a poacher killed there, and learnt of the nameless arrests. But I hadn’t taken much note. At the time I was mired in a seemingly endless pursuit of corrupt politicians, trying to find ‘quick hits’ that would guarantee page leads and a nice performance review.

  Then, quite by chance, I came across the story of a South African, a farm attack and rifles being smuggled across the border into Zimbabwe to be used to kill rhinos for their horns. I was intrigued. I wanted to know more. And so I dug. And the more I dug, the more I unearthed, and the more horrified I became. Horrified at the tales of ruthless criminal enterprise on a scale that I could not have imagined.

  What follows is the true story of poachers, killers, pimps, soldiers, generals, assassins, mercenaries, con men, prostitutes, gunrunners, game farmers, corrupt politicians, diplomats and scoundrels. It is also the story of one of South Africa’s most precious assets: an animal that has been around for fifty million years. This is the rhinos’ last stand. One that, tragically, they may not survive.

  Website: www.killingforprofit.com

  Facebook: facebook.com/KillingForProfit

  Twitter: @julianrademeyer

  1

  Crooks’ Corner

  3 August 2009, Southern Zimbabwe

  Blood seeps through the dark-green fabric of Hardlife’s anorak. At first, the scouts think he is dead. Only when they are about thirty metres away from him do they see movement.

  Hardlife looks up at the two men standing over him. Brown boots. Olive-drab uniforms. One of them is holding a rifle. He asks the men for a cigarette. ‘You shouldn’t smoke,’ someone says. Hardlife insists. There’s a pack in his trouser pocket. They light the cigarette for him.

  A hundred metres away, across a stream, a body is sprawled in the brush. Life Mbedzi is dead. A .303 rifle, the stock bloodied and smeared with fingerprints, lies nearby. It is fitted with a battered scope and a custom-made silencer.

  The men had crossed the fence line into the Bubye Valley Conservancy the previous night under a full moon. There were three of them: Hardlife Nkomo, Life Mbedzi and Never Ndlovu. They carried packs, tinned food, two .303 rifles, including the one with the silencer, a handheld spotlight and an axe. They set up camp and slept fitfully until first light.

  Game scouts discovered the remnants of their campfire shortly after 9 a.m. The ash and cinders had been covered up, but were still warm. An empty tin of baked beans was found hidden nearby.

  Some distance from the camp, the scouts came across the scuffed boot prints of three men and the spoor of two adult rhino and a calf. It made their task a little easier. Poachers rarely deviate from spoor once they’re on it.

  For six hours the scouts followed the tracks, moving quietly and steadily, careful not to miss any signs. Finally, they came across fresh spoor. Two ‘stop groups’ were quickly deployed to cut ahead and set up ambush positions.

  They didn’t have long to wait. Fifteen minutes later, three figures emerged from the scrub and thorn trees. They walked slowly. A hundred metres … fifty metres … twenty-five metres. Then a shout tore through the silence. Startled, the poachers took flight. They ran hard, headlong into the scouts.

  Life fired blindly at them with the silenced rifle. The scouts returned fire. Hardlife dropped like a stone. Life and Never sprinted across a narrow stream, the scouts following close behind. Suddenly Life stopped in his tracks, swung around and fired another shot. An instant later, he was dead, struck by a scout’s bullet. Never Ndlovu kept running.

  The 340 000-hectare Bubye Valley Conservancy is one of the last strongholds of Zimbabwe’s embattled rhino population. More than 80 per cent of the country’s rhinos are now situated on a handful of private conservancies in the country’s south-eastern Lowveld.

  In 1970 there were an estimated 65 000 black rhino across Africa. By the 1980s, most had been slaughtered by poachers. Today, only 5 000 remain. In Zimbabwe, there are just over 400.

  In recent years, Zimbabwe has experienced some of the worst levels of rhino poaching since the 1980s. The killings have been fuelled by Zimbabwe’s ongoing political and economic turmoil, large-scale illegal hunting by ruthless South African safari operators, and growing demand for rhino horn on the black markets of Southeast Asia.

  In 2000, President Robert Mugabe’s government began a ‘fast-track’ land-resettlement programme that saw hundreds of predominantly white-owned farms seized by squatters and independence ‘war veterans’ determined to reclaim land they said had been ‘stolen by settlers’. The seizures – which Mugabe repeatedly claimed were intended to benefit the ‘poor, landless masses’ – were often accompanied by violence and used to intimidate and attack political opponents of the ruling ZANU-PF party.

  Mugabe and his allies reportedly seized nearly half the country’s commercial farms for themselves and their cronies. Wildlife conservancies and plantations were parcelled off to a ‘well-connected elite’, with devastating results.

  Agricultural production reportedly fell by as much as 70 per cent over the course of a decade, with production losses estimated at nearly R100 billion (about $12 billion). By 2002 it was conservatively estimated that game worth R330 million (about $40 million) had been lost since the start of the farm invasions. Some conservancies had lost up to 60 per cent of their animals. In places, poachers tore down game fences and used the wire to make hundreds of snares.

  A US embassy assessment in 2003 attributed the dramatic escalation in poaching to widespread hunger, land seizures, and ‘the general breakdown of law and order’. Some ‘commercial operators’ had also taken advantage of the ‘relative chaos by marketing “bush meat” and smuggling rhino horn’.

  Some South African hunters and safari operators had also been quick to cash in. ‘A lot of South Africans thought Zimbabwe was going to the dogs, and their attitude was, “Let’s get in and get our cut,”’ says Blondie Leathem, Bubye’s general manager.

  In the Gwaai Valley Conservancy, near the Hwange National Park in western Zimbabwe, South African hunters were accused of ‘shooting whole herds of animals’. Describing the carnage, a conservationist I interviewed said: ‘Gwaai was destroyed early on. There were a lot of South African hunters involved in raping that place – just shooting e
ntire herds of zebra and wildebeest.’

  Zimbabwean rhino specialist, Raoul du Toit – the man credited with driving the formation of the conservancies in the early 1990s – said that while ‘impoverished Zimbabweans may claim that they are driven to poaching in order to feed themselves, relatively wealthy sports hunters from South Africa have no such excuse – their unethical behaviour is driven by financial interests and thrill-seeking’.

  There were other elements involved, too. US diplomatic cables warned of ‘heavily armed “military” personnel’ linked to incidents of rhino poaching. A 2009 cable from the Harare embassy reported on ‘persistent rumours that senior government officials may be involved in poaching and smuggling’. The cable’s author noted that journalists and conservationists had been ‘warned not to investigate too deeply’.

  Hardlife takes a drag on the cigarette and coughs. He speaks slowly, weakened by shock and loss of blood. The silenced .303 had been given to them by a South African, he tells his interrogators. A ‘heavy white man’ called Johannes. He said the gang had previously supplied him with zebra skins and rhino horns. He had arranged to collect them at 8 p.m. that night at a spot along the tar road near the conservancy, about sixty kilometres north of the Zimbabwean border post at Beitbridge. The gang would leave a tree branch in the road to signal that all was safe.

  At least 123 rhinos were poached in Zimbabwe in 2008 – the highest number recorded since 1987 and nearly three times the number killed in 2007. The Bubiana Conservancy, just to the north of the Bubye Valley, bore the brunt of the initial attacks. One of Bubiana’s scouts was killed; another was wounded. By the end of 2008, seventy-one rhinos had been shot in the Lowveld conservancies.

  In one incident, a group of Zimbabwe National Parks (Zimparks) rangers and rhino monitors surprised a gang of poachers who were resting among the granite boulders of a koppie. Two rangers and a poacher simultaneously opened fire with AK-47s, spraying the hillside with bullets. They were only about seven metres apart, but in the chaos most of the shots went wide. One of the poachers was hit in the arm. Somehow, the rangers escaped unscathed. Nineteen spent cartridge casings were later picked up at the scene.