Killing for Profit: Exposing the Illegal Rhino Horn Trade (46 page)

The first case in which DNA profiles were used successfully to link smuggled horns to a specific rhino occurred not in South Africa, but in the United Kingdom. A Lancashire antique dealer, Donald Allison, was stopped at Manchester
Airport on 30 June 2009 shortly before he was due to board a flight to Beijing. He was carrying what at first appeared to be a bronze sculpture of a bird perched on a log. On closer inspection, border agents discovered that it was made of fibreglass and resin. Inside the log were two rhino horns wrapped in cling film and tape.

Samples from the horns were sent via the TRACE network to Harper’s team. Investigators had also put out a request to British and Irish museums for information on recent rhino deaths. The Colchester Zoo quickly responded. A white rhino bull, unfittingly named Simba, had been euthanised after falling seriously ill that April. For thirty years it had been one of the zoo’s star attractions. The carcass had been incinerated, but blood samples from medical evaluations had been stored. A DNA profile was extracted. It matched the horns. Later, Essex police established that the rhino’s entire head had been stolen from the abattoir where it was sent to be burnt. It was sold to Allison for £400. He was subsequently jailed for twelve months.

The second test case made legal history in South Africa. A Vietnamese security guard named Xuan Hoang was arrested at OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg in March 2010 after seven rhino horns weighing sixteen kilograms were found in his luggage. Samples were sent to Harper’s labora tory for analysis and matched to a poaching incident a few days before Hoang’s arrest. Hoang was sentenced to ten years in jail. The case set a new legal precedent, as the fact that the horns could be tied to a specific poaching incident played a significant role in the magistrate’s decision.

Harper says that she and her team have ‘no idea about the background to the investigations’ in which they conduct DNA analysis. ‘I prefer it that way. I get the stuff in and I run it completely blind. I have absolutely no involvement with the rest of the investigation. The big issue is the chain of custody, how the evidence is collected, how it reaches us and how that is recorded. DNA evidence is rarely questioned by the courts – it is the evidence chain that is normally attacked by the defence. We supply DNA collection kits and have done a lot of training.’

The laboratory employs only a handful of staff and for years has operated on a shoestring budget. By July 2012, the RhoDIS database contained 5 000 individual rhino DNA profiles. According to Harper, the number of poaching
cases in which DNA analysis is now being requested is increasing. ‘Theoretically, you can do the analysis in a day. But if you’ve got a backlog and only a certain number of staff, it gets longer and longer.’

In April 2012, environment minister Edna Molewa gazetted new ‘norms and standards’, which require the collection of samples of horns and blood in DNA kits whenever live rhino are darted to be translocated or treated. These samples are then to be handed over to the Veterinary Genetics Laboratory for profiling. Arguably the only true forensic ‘science’, DNA analysis is now an indispensable tool in South Africa’s fight against rhino poaching. Efforts are also under way to expand the reach of the database to other African, Asian and European countries.

‘As an investigation tool, it’s brilliant,’ says Colonel Johan Jooste, head of the endangered species section at the Hawks and an executive member of the Interpol Wildlife Crime Working Group. ‘Without a doubt, it is one of the best tools we have.’

It had been months since I’d heard anything about Mukwena. The last sighting of him had been in the Bubye Valley Conservancy in Zimbabwe on 27 December 2011, two days after a rhino had been shot dead by poachers. He had been seen driving a Toyota TownAce minibus that had once belonged to Nobby Mlilo, a key poaching middleman from Mpande. Mlilo – an ex-soldier – had been shot dead by Zimbabwean police four months earlier while trying to poach rhinos in the Chipinge Safari area, 236 kilometres east of Masvingo. Mukwena, it seemed, had inherited or taken over the vehicle, which was believed to contain a secret compartment underneath the spare wheel for smuggling rifles. It would be the last sighting of him for a while.

The arrest of a Zimbabwean poacher by a watchful police-station commander made headlines in a number of South African newspapers. But the reports didn’t name the suspect and there were no journalists in court when the case was first called. The story was quickly forgotten. It was only by chance that I spotted the docket on the desk of a policeman two weeks

later and recognised the name of the man I had tried to find in Zimbabwe and Musina.

6 February 2012

Three weeks after Rodgers Mukwena’s arrest, Harper calls Captain Charmaine Swart, the investigating officer, with the DNA results from the horn samples. It is a match. The horns are from a cow and calf that were poached in the Dinaka Game Reserve, a privately owned game farm in the Waterberg Mountains 230 kilometres north of Johannesburg. The incident had occurred two weeks before Mukwena’s arrest.

Confronted with this information, Mukwena initially agrees to co-operate with the cops. Under police escort, he is taken to Dinaka to formally ‘point out’ the crime scene and walk investigators through the details of the crime. He denies killing the calf, blaming it on an accomplice who, he claims, shot it to stop it ‘bothering’ them while they cut off the cow’s horns. He names the henchman as Never Ndlovu, the same man who had accompanied Hardlife Nkomo and Life Mbedzi on their ill-fated 2009 incursion into Bubye. Ndlovu was arrested four months after that incident, but had been released on bail and disappeared before he could be sentenced. At the time of writing, there was still a warrant out for him in Zimbabwe and a R5 000 reward for any information leading to his arrest.

Two days after the ‘pointing out’, Captain Swart receives a call on her cell-phone from a man calling himself ‘Mike’. He claims to be Rodgers Mukwena’s brother and says he would like to discuss the case with her and the possibility of arranging bail for Rodgers. The matter is out of her hands, Swart says. Mike makes Swart an offer: he’ll pay her R13 000 if she can ‘make a plan’ to lose the docket and arrange for Rodgers to ‘escape’ on the way to his next court appearance. Swart thinks it over, then tells Mike to call her back in a few days to discuss the details. They eventually agree to a meeting at a Wimpy fast-food restaurant in Pretoria North. The rendezvous is set for 11 a.m. on 15 February, two days before Mukwena is due back in court.

Mike is waiting for Swart at the Wimpy when she arrives. She had called
him earlier and told him what she would be wearing. He nods in recognition as she pushes her way through the glass doors. They take a seat in one of the red booths and order coffee. ‘Is everything organised?’ Mike asks. ‘Yes,’ Swart says. One of her colleagues will be taking Rodgers to court and will ‘let him go and make it seem like he escaped’.

‘Rodgers must never be seen again,’ she adds. Mike agrees, saying he plans to take him to the Zimbabwe border. He’ll need Rodgers’s passport and driver’s licence. Mike says he’s willing to pay a further R2 000 if Swart can get them to him before the escape. She agrees, then hands Mike an envelope. The docket is inside it, she says. Mike gives her the money. It is in denominations of R100 and R200.

‘Do you want to count it?’ he asks.

‘No, it’s fine. I trust you,’ Swart replies and slips the money into her handbag. She stands up. Seconds later, on her signal, a police back-up team surrounds Mike. The documents in the envelope are blank. The money, less R170 of Swart’s own cash, which she had declared before the operation commenced, is counted out in front of Mike. It adds up to R13 000, as promised.

Mike’s identity document gives his name as Mokibelo Michael Mokoena, a variation on Mukwena. He’s forty-two and lives in Shoshanguve. Like the man he says is his brother, he’s a teacher and works at a junior secondary school.

At the time of going to print, both cases were still continuing in the Pretoria North Regional Court.

23 April 2008

Tommy Tuan is trapped. Spread out on a bed in Room 122 at the Road Lodge in Kimberley are wads of cash. Thick bundles of hundred-rand bills held together with rubber bands. One million two hundred and eighty thousand rand plus change. There’s also a duffel bag and ten rhino horns weighing just over twenty kilos. Hidden under an armchair, where he can’t reach it, is a 6.35mm pistol. It is compact, light and – unless you know what you’re doing – more likely to hurt someone or piss them off than kill them. Outside, in the parking lot, is a grey Honda Accord with red diplomatic licence plates. But between Tommy and the door are three cops.

Tommy’s real name is Nguyen Thien Tuan. It is a tongue-curdling mouthful for most South Africans, so he uses Tommy instead. He’s thirty-three, owns a jewellery business in Port Elizabeth – a coastal city in the Eastern Cape – and lives in a modest townhouse complex with his wife, Tran Thu Hien. They’re planning to buy a place of their own soon. They came to South Africa from Vietnam two years ago. In July 2006, Tommy bought a business and renamed it Tuan’s Designer Jewellers. He rented shop 41 at the Walker Drive Shopping Centre.

Business seemed good. Tommy even sponsored a horse race at Arlington Race Course in February 2008: the Tuan’s Designer Jewellers Maiden Juvenile Plate – a 1 000-metre race for two-year-olds. A horse called Major Domo was the first across the line. Triumphant Surge came in second and Run Wolf Run, third.

But the jewellery business has another purpose. It is a front. Tommy buys and sells rhino horns. In 2008, single horns can still be traded quite legally within South Africa’s borders as long as you have the necessary permits. The real problem arises when you want to export them. That’s illegal. Only hunting trophies can be exported legally. But Tommy has friends at the Vietnamese embassy in Pretoria, and they have a ‘diplomatic bag’. The ‘bag’ itself can take on many forms, from an envelope to a parcel, or a suitcase to a shipping container. Whatever shape it takes, it is immune from search and seizure as long as it is correctly marked.

The demand for rhino horn in Vietnam is growing at an unprecedented rate. Tommy and others like him are scouring the length and breadth of South Africa for horns. As long as the price is right, many game farmers are happy to part with rhino horns. Usually it is the ‘loose stock’ they’ve accumulated over the years as a result of natural mortalities. Nobody pays much heed to the permits and paperwork.

But these endeavours have not gone unnoticed. The politicians are muttering about a crackdown. There are concerns, too, that legal trade within South Africa is being used to launder horns from animals killed by poachers. A ban on internal domestic trade is looking increasingly likely. Time is running out, and so is Tommy’s luck.