A parliamentary committee received a briefing on Wednesday about how a sophisticated criminal syndicate pulled off a brazen heist at the headquarters of the North West Parks and Tourism Board, stealing 51 rhino horns
A former Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife field ranger, who was fired four years ago after he was linked to criminal rhino poaching syndicates, has been arrested near Johannesburg for trafficking in rhino horns.
Njabulo Mbatha, 31, from KwaZulu-Natal, and Mozambican Armando Amosse Chingo, 33, spent the weekend behind bars after they appeared in the Germiston magistrate’s court on Friday.
They were arrested on Wednesday evening after Gauteng authorities received an intelligence tip-off that they were in possession of rhino horns poached earlier that week in KwaZulu-Natal.
According to Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (the Hawks) spokesperson Lieutenant Philani Nkwalase, the Benoni-based NoJack vehicle tracking unit received information on Wednesday from a KwaZulu-Natal province police officer about a motor vehicle that was illegally transporting rhino horns.
“NoJack dispatched its members to the Germiston area near Johannesburg where the suspects’ vehicle was spotted shortly after 8pm travelling through the suburb of Bedfordview,” Nkwalase said.
“The team then communicated with the police and were instructed to stop the vehicle.”
Members of the police K9 unit, the Hawks, Green Scorpions and international law enforcement took over the scene and two rhino horns were recovered inside the suspects’ vehicle. Samples were taken from the horns and sent to the RhODIS testing facility at the University of Pretoria for DNA analysis and possible matching to tissue retrieved from poached carcasses at wildlife crime scenes in KwaZulu-Natal.
Sources told the Mail & Guardian Mbatha was dismissed from his job at the world-renowned Hluhluwe iMfolozi Park in 2018.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the sources corroborated investigations by Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife which directly linked Mbatha to Mpumalanga-based crime syndicates which had infiltrated and compromised staff at the park.
By 2017, records show poachers were butchering rhinos at the park in unprecedented numbers.
In early July that year, Mbatha was a field ranger in the Mbuzane section of iMfolozi where six rhinos were massacred in just one night. According to reports, 11 gunshots were heard at about midnight on a Sunday evening. At first light, park rangers and anti-poaching units found the dead rhinos in an area where the gunshots had been heard. All their horns had been hacked off and removed.
Asked to comment on Mbatho’s arrest last week on rhino horn trafficking charges, Ezemvelo spokesperson Musa Mntambo acknowledged the former ranger’s arraignment but declined to comment on the reasons for his dismissal in 2018.
In 2012, another former ranger Bheki Msweli, also known as Bhekinkosi Mtshali, was axed over his links to dealing in rhino horns.
The KwaZulu-Natal member of the executive council for economic development, tourism and environmental affairs Ravi Pillay acknowledged earlier this year that Ezemvelo was facing an integrity crisis among its staff members.
“As far as Ezemvelo is concerned, it’s an entity in crisis, there’s no dispute about that. We are very concerned about the infiltration of criminal elements and syndicates into the workforce of Ezemvelo,” Pillay said. By Monday, Ezemvelo reported 139 rhinos had been killed since the beginning of the year. As many as 125 of those killed have been poached at Hluhluwe iMfolozi Park.
If the rate of these killings is not arrested and brought under control, conservationists predict the province could lose as many as 270 rhinos this year.
By comparison, 222 rhinos were killed in 2017, marking it the highest annual total recorded in the history of the province.
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