Killing for Profit: Exposing the Illegal Rhino Horn Trade

by Rademeyer, Julian

  Van der Westhuizen, the owner of the Letsatsi La Africa Wild Animal and Predator Park, was unrepentant. ‘Tell the greenies to go to hell and go moan somewhere else,’ he said. He seemed to have few qualms whom he would do business with. In fact, in June 2010, he invited Chai and a Vietnamese national, Bach van Lim, to visit the park and watch the FIFA World Cup there.

  Werner Boing, a senior official in the Free State department responsible for issuing and enforcing permits, says there is not much he can do to stop the trade, which is not illegal.

  Ninety per cent of the animals killed for their bones are lionesses, Boing says. ‘As long as the bones have value, I can’t tell a farmer that they can’t sell them. I don’t like it, but I don’t have any grounds on which to stop it.’ Male lions are rarely put down for their bones. ‘There is a big hunting market for male lions, particularly in North West province, where they are issuing an incredible number of permits.’

  He confirmed that Van der Westhuizen had originally applied for a permit to put down twenty lions in order to sell their bones. That permit lapsed and another was issued. Ten lions were destroyed. Boing told me that a permit application for a lion to be put down has to include a justification.

  ‘You would have to say why you want to put the lion down. In a lot of cases it is old lionesses that don’t have breeding potential. They can’t just be shot. Our requirements are that a vet be there [to put the animal down] and a conservation official also be present.’

  Official figures for lion-bone exports from South Africa are unreliable and contradictory, made even more so by chaotic attempts to merge statistics from nine provincial departments. In April 2011, the South African Minister of Environmental Affairs, Edna Molewa, said eighty-six permits were issued in 2009 for the export of lion carcasses, and 171 permits for lion skeletons in 2010. All the consignments were destined for Laos. But more detailed figures, released earlier in response to questions posed by the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), indicate that 142 carcasses and fourteen ‘floating bones’ were exported in 2009. The figures for 2010 state that 235 carcasses were exported from North West province alone, and 1 363 bones from the Free State. In contrast, records held by the CITES secretariat suggest that eighty ‘bodies’, five skeletons and 250 kilograms of lion bones were shipped from South Africa to Laos in 2009. The CITES figures for 2010 show that 130 skeletons were exported to Laos, along with 586 bones, fifty-four claws, ninety teeth, six skulls and fifty-four trophies.

  Why the demand for lion bones? The answer lies in the steady decline of the world’s tiger population and an unwavering belief in many Asian countries that the bones are a panacea for a range of ills. The staggering growth of Asia’s economic dragons and the increase in disposable income have fuelled the trade.

  According to the WWF, the global tiger population is thought to have fallen by over 95 per cent since the turn of the twentieth century, down from 100 000 then to perhaps as few as 3 200 today.

  A seminal sixteenth-century Chinese materia medica – which still holds currency in traditional Chinese medicinal circles – describes how the bones are used.

  The yellow [bones] from the males are best. Animals shot with arrows should not be used because the poison enters the bones and blood and is harmful to people … The bones should be broken up and the marrow removed. Butter or urine or vinegar is applied, according to the type of prescription, and they are browned over a charcoal fire.

  The bones’ uses are varied.

  For removing all kinds of evil influences and calming fright. For curing bad ulcers and rat-bite sores. For rheumatic pain [of] the joints and muscles, and muscle cramps. For abdominal pain, typhoid fever, malaria, hydrophobia. Placed on the roof it can keep devils away and so cure nightmares. A bath in tiger bone broth is good for rheumatic swellings of the bones and joints. The shin bones are excellent for treating painfully swollen feet. It is applied with vinegar to the knees. Newborn children should be bathed in it to prevent infection, convulsions, devil possession, scabies and boils, it will then grow up without any sickness. It strengthens the bones, cures chronic dysentery, prolapse of the anus and is taken to dislodge bones which have become stuck in the gullet. The powdered bone is applied to burns and eruptions under the toenail.

  Steyl appears to have little interest, beyond a certain morbid curiosity, in the medicinal uses of the bones. For him, it is about the money.

  As the bakkie, with Izak behind the wheel, jolts along the dirt road to Steyl’s farm, Klipplaatfontein, Johnny catches a glimpse of the lions pacing in their enclosures. Back and forth they prowl. Back and forth. Back and forth. Their movements are slow and lethargic, dulled by months or years of captivity. Two lion carcasses, freshly skinned, hang nearby in a container.

  Johnny takes an instant dislike to Steyl. He’s an ‘arrogant, domineering little bliksem’, ‘windgat’ and brashly self-important. Inside a barn, Steyl shows them the lion bones, spread out haphazardly on the floor. The bacterial stench of decay chokes the air.

  Punpitak has an eye for this sort of thing. He sifts through the bones, arranging them into sets. After a while, the skeletons begin to take shape. There are twelve sets in all, but there are bones missing and those that are there are small. A thousand rand a kilogram is the going rate. If the skull and feet are still intact, an additional R5 000 is added to the purchase price. The men pay Steyl R60 000, bag the bones and heft them onto the back of the bakkie.

  It will be months before they hear from Steyl again. When they do, he has a new business proposition for them to consider.

  Johnny takes the call. It’s Steyl. ‘I’ve got a bunch of rhinos. Do you want to hunt them?’ he asks. Steyl says he recently bought a game farm in North West province. It is called the Aurora Private Nature Reserve. The previous owner’s brother-in-law, Harry Claassens, is a registered professional hunter in the province. They have become firm friends.

  Johnny is uncertain: ‘We don’t really do rhinos, we do lion bones. But I’ll ask Chai if he’s interested.’ Chai is more than interested. He can barely contain his excitement. ‘Yes,’ he yammers. ‘Trophies, trophies, trophies!’

  The deal is struck. Steyl will supply the rhinos and organise the hunting permits. It shouldn’t be too hard. The North West provincial authorities dish out permits like business cards. And they don’t ask too many hard questions. Now Steyl needs hunters, and Punpitak knows where to find them.

  Green strobe lights cut through the darkness. A mirrorball turns slowly, shards of light illuminating the shadows huddled around the stage. Lady Gaga blares from the speakers. A tattooed dancer gyrates around a steel pole in a gynaecological display of feigned eroticism.

  It’s 3 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon in Church Street, Pretoria. The bar is starting to fill up with regulars clutching shot glasses, beers and polisiekoffie: stiff double brandies and Coke.

  Flamingo’s is one of Pretoria’s more notorious dens of iniquity. In a prev ious incarnation it was the stomping ground of an infamous Pretoria biker gang. And in 2010, after a torrid night’s drinking at the club, Blue Bulls and Super 14 rugby star, Bees Roux, beat a Metro policeman to death. Roux claimed during his trial that the policeman had tried to rob him after stopping him for drunk driving and that he had defended himself. He received a suspended sentence in a plea deal that included paying R750 000 in compensation to the dead man’s family.

  In August 2011, the club’s one-time silent partner, a disgraced safari-company owner, Hugo Ras, was arrested in a police raid on his three-storey home in Magalieskruin in northern Pretoria. During a search, investigators found an unlicensed firearm and large quantities of M99, a powerful anaesthetic that is widely used in game capture and also to dart rhinos. The drug – which is 3 000 times more potent than morphine – is fatal to humans, and its distribution is meant to be strictly controlled.

  Police had obtained a warrant on the basis that they wanted to question Ras about the murder of a Russian stripper, Lana Muratava. She had disappeared
from Flamingo’s late one night in November 2010 and was last seen alive with a man in a white Land Cruiser. Her corpse was discovered days later in a ditch next to a road in Hammanskraal. There were claims that she had been killed with M99, but early tabloid press reports suggested that the back of her skull had been repeatedly bashed in. Other rumours alleged she had been strangled.

  Ras was charged, but not for the murder. He and seven others, including three veterinarians, faced provisional charges of contravening the Medicines and Related Substances Control Act over the illegal distribution of M99. One of the men in the dock alongside Ras was Dr Douw Grobler, a veterinarian and former head of game capture at the Kruger National Park. Grobler had made an international name for himself in the 1990s at Kruger, where he was involved in the large-scale relocation of animals, including elephant and rhino. He was fired by the park in 2001 for the unauthorised sale of animals from the park’s buffalo-breeding project.

  I met Ras outside the Pretoria North Magistrate’s Court in April 2012. He was in a chatty mood. The case had been postponed again and charges against five of his co-accused had been dropped. He believed the case was crumbling. He denied any knowledge of Muratava’s death. ‘The girl was an interpreter for me when I had Russian clients on my farm.’ The clients, he says, invariably ‘wanted an interpreter and also a girl to fuck. I decided to make a plan and get a girl who interprets and screws. She makes more money and there is one less person in the Land Cruiser when we go out hunting. That is the only fucking connection I had with her. I never touched her. The stories that people think up are like Isidingo, The Wild, Sewende Laan and Binnelanders [local television soap operas] all rolled into one.’

  It wasn’t the first time that Ras had fallen foul of the law. In 2000 and 2001, he was arrested for various contraventions of nature conservation and customs regulations and fined. In 2004, the Mail & Guardian newspaper revealed that a bull elephant Ras had purchased from the Kruger National Park had been hunted by a Texan oil magnate within hours of its arrival on a game farm near Rustenburg in North West. Gavin Hulett, a park warden, told the paper that four bull elephants had been sold to Ras on condition that they would not be hunted. Ras claimed the bull was shot after it broke out of camp.

  A year later he was back in the news, this time charged with murder after a contractor working on his farm was attacked and killed by a lion. The charge was eventually dropped. The same year, Ras was fined for assault. The day I spoke to him outside court, he boasted about his numerous run-ins with police and the courts, saying the charges rarely stuck.

  A group of young Thai women is clustered in a corner of the club, tarted up in short black dresses, lashings of make-up and stiletto heels. They’re on display, like so many cattle. A girl called Tanya slugs back a shot of tequila, sneers at the Thais and launches into a racist tirade. ‘I don’t fucking know where they come from,’ she says in Afrikaans. ‘They must fuck off. They’re irritating, just irritating. They speak loud and they’re like fucking kaffirs, man,’ she says, using a crude racist slur for black Africans.

  She’s twenty-six, but her face is hard and old, her eyes like cut glass. She’s worked here, in Flamingo’s, on-and-off for years. ‘Are you a dancer?’ I ask.

  ‘No’, she says. ‘I’m into fucking.’

  The Thais are Tanya’s competition. Her overtures unsuccessful, Tanya moves on to another table and another potential client. Her place is quickly taken by a twenty-eight-year-old Thai woman with an infectious laugh. She’s been in South Africa for three years, she tells me. Her family is poor, from a rural town somewhere. Her father worked in a factory until he couldn’t work any more. He’s seventy now. Her mother is sixty.

  ‘In my country, people get paid very little. That’s why I came here.’ A friend had invited her over with promises of money to be made.

  ‘I can do any job,’ she says. ‘Cooking, cleaning, washing, whatever.’

  For a year she worked for a Chinese boss in a factory shop in Nelspruit. The hours were brutal. ‘We sold blankets, TVs, T-shirts, anything. I was crying a lot then. When I came to this country, I can say “sorry”, nothing else. So I learn English.’

  She eventually moved to Johannesburg, and another ‘friend’ found her a job in a strip club. ‘The first time I worked, I didn’t want to take my clothes off. I was scared. Someone wrapped a skirt around me and then they pushed me out onto stage. Go make money, go, go, go, they said. A guy gives me R100 or R200 and I say, “Why you give me money?” I didn’t understand.’

  Now she charges R500 for a lap dance. Just yesterday she made R2 800. She is worried about AIDS and doesn’t have sex with clients. ‘Only jacuzzi dancing,’ she says. ‘I only six months working here. When I get enough money, I look for other business. Sometimes the people are like animals. The other day, I dancing back there,’ she says, gesturing in the direction of a private room near the bar. ‘This crazy guy, he opens his pants and takes it out. I could not believe it … Another guy wants me to sucky-sucky, no condom. It’s not safe.’

  I leave the table and head for the men’s room on my way out. A sign on the wall reads: ‘Viagra for sale at reception.’

  The Thai women who ply their trade at Flamingo’s and other strip clubs and massage parlours scattered around Gauteng are ideal for Punpitak’s plan. They’re outsiders: isolated and on the fringes of the expatriate community. Most barely speak a word of English. And most have families to support back home. A few thousand rand can go a long way and, for Punpitak, it’s a lot cheaper than flying in hunters from Thailand and Vietnam.

  He trawls the clubs for candidates, chatting up the women with assurances of money, paid holidays at safari lodges and vague promises of work in tourism. He purports to be a successful businessman and ostentatiously flaunts the trappings of his wealth – thick wads of cash, a giant silver bling-ring on his left hand and, of course, the Hummer.

  Johnny Olivier says Punpitak, whom he most frequently refers to by his farang name, Peter, is ‘the biggest bullshitter I’ve ever met’.

  ‘Peter went to clubs in Midrand, Rosebank in Johannesburg and Pomona Road. He held a carrot out to the girls: “Do you want to make a quick R5 000? You get to go on holiday, you get R5 000 and all we need is your passport.” Any Thai citizen living here trying to make a buck would take an offer like that in the blink of an eye … Peter would disappear for a night, and the following morning he’d pitch up with copies of two or three Thai girls’ passports.’

  Punpitak’s quest is aided by William, a grotesquely bloated South African pimp who lives with his Thai wife, Mau, on a smallholding in Midrand, halfway between Pretoria and Johannesburg. The couple run a group of Thai ‘girls’ who work the club scene.

  Many of the ‘girls’ come to South Africa on holiday visas. Weeks after their arrival, fresh paperwork is submitted on their behalf to the Department of Home Affairs in Germiston on Gauteng’s East Rand, requesting a change in ‘permit status’. A copy of a ‘life-partnership agreement’ with a South African man and confirmation of employment as a ‘part-time beauty therapist’ accompanies the forms.

  ‘The reason for my application is that I met Nicholas F… at a party held for a mutual friend,’ a letter, purportedly written by one of the women, reads. ‘[W]e had an instant connection we became friend [sic] and eventually decided to live together. He rents a garden flat from his aunt … I have been offered part-time employment. I wish for my visa to be amended to accompanying spouse and extended for the period that I can remain in South Africa and continue to build a future with my life partner and soul mate.’

  The paperwork includes a standardised note from ‘Nicholas F…’ in which he affirms the story, saying he met the young woman at a party after a Thai festival, that they ‘have a lot in common’ and enjoy the ‘same things in life’, and that he promises to ‘care for all her needs’. The same addresses are used in multiple applications and the same wording appears in some of the supporting documents. But despite the glaring similar
ities, home affairs officials approve the applications.

  Mau, William’s wife, quickly becomes an integral part of Punpitak’s scheme, convincing women in her wide circle of Thai ‘friends’ to hand over their passports and go on ‘safari’.

  Johnny takes on the role of administrator. He scans photocopies of passports and emails them to Steyl, who submits the permit applications. The process runs like clockwork. ‘You can tell Peter he can come and hunt, as the permits [have come] through,’ Steyl says when he calls back a week or so later.

  Data compiled by the South African Department of Environmental Affairs show that the first hunts take place in November 2010. Four hunting permits are issued to Miss Boonta Kongklin, Miss Onsuthee Konsanit, Miss Purichaya Hatthakit and Miss Pecharat Janmeetes respectively. Hunting records released by North West province in response to questions in Parliament indicate that the permits were issued on 12 November 2010. An invoice sent by Steyl on 16 November 2010, and addressed to Mr Vixay Keosavang and Mr Chumlong Lemtongthai of Xaysavang Trading Export-Import in Laos, requests payment of R246 000 ($36 176) for a hunted rhino with horns weighing 4.1 kilograms.

  A text message sent on 2 December 2010 from Chumlong to Steyl reads: ‘Transfer usd 36,176.00’. Two weeks after the first hunts, the next batch of permits is issued. Once again, the hunters are all Thai women: Miss Jirarak Suwannatrai, Miss Onuma Laechankham, Miss Siriporn Phengjoy and Miss Sawitree Suebthangjai.

  The department’s records are telling. Between November 2010 and March 2011, at least twenty permits are issued to Thai women to conduct rhino hunts on Steyl’s North West farm. Some, like Siriporn Phengjoy, Boonta Kongklin and Sawitree Suebthangjai, are listed on permits issued in both 2010 and 2011. And in every instance, the professional hunter who accompanies the ‘clients’ is Harry Claassens.