Horn of Africa a way out of poverty

The rhinoceros is one of the main attractions at South Africa's national parks. Photo / Jim Eagles

Poachers who are seen in the West as a threat to wildlife regarded as Robin Hoods in their own communities

The well-heeled tourists filing through the modest airport at Hoedspruit - Afrikaans for Hat Creek - look carefree and expectant. Guides are standing by to transport them to luxurious bush lodges offering spa treatments, campfire dinners, and dawn and dusk game drives offering a potential glimpse of Africa's "big five".

But something is different from the safaris enjoyed by the privileged generations of the past. At the 14,570ha Moditlo private game reserve near Kruger National Park, for example, the rhinos do not have horns - they have been removed for their own safety. And during night safaris on dirt tracks under the majesty of a star-studded sky, visitors are warned not to use torches, lest they be confused with poachers. When guests - usually affluent, usually white - gaze from air-conditioned bedrooms into the perfect darkness of the bush, few are likely to consider the murderous chase taking place there between poacher, ranger and rhino. For the poachers - usually poor, usually black - the risks are immense, but so are the rewards.

"When you look at the impoverished communities around us and the unemployment rate in South Africa, you'd have to be naive to think it's not going to explode," said Tim Parker, a warden managing Moditlo and Thornybush Nature Reserve, where anti-poaching costs have gone up 500 per cent in the past three years. "Soon there are going to be gun battles. I can see it coming."

South Africa has more than four-fifths of the world's rhino population. Poaching is at an unprecedented level, driven by demand in countries such as Vietnam, where horns, used in traditional medicine or as a middle-class delicacy, fetch up to US$65,000 ($95,420) a kilo, more expensive than diamonds or gold. A record 1215 rhinos were killed last year, almost treble the 448 lost in 2011. As of late August this year, 749 rhinos were known to have been poached - 544 of them in Kruger park, where officials estimate 6000 well-armed poachers are at large.

But there is another, less reported death toll. Nearly 500 poachers from neighbouring Mozambique alone have been shot dead by rangers in Kruger park over the past five years, it was claimed recently. Joaquim Chissano, Mozambique's former President, said 82 alleged poachers from the country were killed in the first half of this year, describing them as "destitute, poor people recruited by crime networks".

In Massingir, Mozambique, the illegal rhino horn trade has been as alluring and disorienting as a gold rush. Earlier this year Bartholomaus Grill, a German journalist at Der Spiegel, reported that about 20 leaders of poaching gangs are thought to live in Massingir "and their houses are unmistakable: ostentatious villas rising up out of the bush between shacks and adobe houses with tiled exterior walls and tinted windows covered with metal bars".

Poverty is suffocating in Massingir and opportunities are scarce. To young men, killing a rhino and delivering its horn can seem a quick way out, earning them as much as 100,000 rand (11,220) a kilo. To some communities rhino poachers are role models, according to the US State Department, based on interviews with nine focus groups in Massingir and other local communities. "They do good things for their communities - send children to school, build nice houses, drive expensive cars and wear expensive clothes," one interviewee said. "In one discussion, participants stated they see the parks as being 'for white people, with jobs going to Boers and Zimbabweans'. Some say their children 'don't know the rhino' and have 'to pay to see a rhino in our own land'."

But the poachers are, in the words of one expert, "cannon fodder" and "nothing more than disposable commodities". A political activist in Massingir, who did not wish to be named because he feared assassination, said: "If a gangster comes and says, 'Young man, I can give you 100,000 rand if you go to the bush and bring me a horn', he will go because of poverty."

Back in Hoedspruit, the travellers driven straight from airport to lodge never see poor communities such as Welverdiend, said to be another, increasing source of poachers. The toll of rhinos slaughtered in the Hoedspruit area has soared from just five between 1990 and 2010 to 16 in 2011 and 30 in 2014.

Vincent Barkas, managing director of anti-poaching security company Protrack, said: "If you look at the average black South African who grows up here, everybody assumes they want to work on a game reserve. The rhino horn for them has become a way out of poverty and for them to achieve their dreams."

As ever in South Africa, race and inequality cannot be ignored. Barkas said: "Wildlife is seen as a rich white man's thing. A poacher is viewed as a Robin Hood in his community, stealing from the rich. Every time a poacher is killed, you turn more people in that community against conservation."

WildAid South Africa campaign director Adam Welz - who points out white people are also known to be implicated, some of them as poachers who can use resources such as helicopters, others as syndicate bosses who profit from supplying the Far East - warns against oversimplifying the racial dynamic. "In some areas, people are alienated from national parks, but to say black South Africans are not interested in conservation is a gross generalisation."

The solutions also are complex, and many believe waging war on poaching is as futile as prohibition of alcohol or the war on drugs. Welz said: "Every poacher who gets shot is a husband, uncle, provider, and we can't forget that. But at the same time we can't roll out the red carpet and say, come in. We have to de-escalate the violence.

"Killing poachers is not going to solve the problem, because the poverty is high and the incentives are high. If you kill 10,000 poachers, there will be another 10,000 waiting to take their place, unless we solve the problem of poverty in those communities and the source of demand. People are paying ridiculous amounts of money for horn in other countries."

Rhino poaching in South Africa

US$65,000
Amount a kg of horns can fetch
1215
rhinos were killed last year
749
known to have poached this year
6000
poachers believed at large in Kruger national park