Should South Africa rethink its strategy on rhino poaching?

Between 2000 and 2013, the market for rhino horn grew 30-fold as prices skyrocketed. Prices peaked at $65,000 per kg in 2012, surpassing gold and cocaine in value. In 2015, we witnessed a whopping 1349 rhinos killed in a single year, the highest number on record, and, in the last decade, over 8000 rhinos have been killed for their horns. 

Powdered rhino horn is an ingredient in Traditional Chinese Medicine and is referenced in Chinese medicinal scriptures such as the 16th century Bencao Gangmu (‘Great Pharmacopeia’), a compilation of knowledge of ancient Chinese medicinal treatments. Although some of these treatments have been shown to have beneficial properties, the claims that rhino horn can cure maladies from “typhoid and headache” to “devil possession” have proven to be more spurious. 

A 2024 study found that human health benefits from rhino horn consumption are unlikely, and described its use to treat illnesses such as cancer, AIDS and measles “alarming” as it “could endanger humans requiring effective medical care.” Whilst some studies purport the ability of rhino horn to reduce fever, others find no effect. Furthermore, rhino horn is susceptible to environmental pollution because rhinos like to wallow in mud and soil, meaning that some of the products sold could be toxic. 

In spite of this, rhino horn use persists in East Asian countries like China and Vietnam, where campaigns against its consumption are largely met with suspicion and mistrust.  In spite of the global ban on rhino horn trade in 1977, demand in these countries continued to grow as they transitioned away from communism and developed a wealthy elite class. Exorbitant demand has led to the establishment of organised crime networks tasked with trafficking rhino horn. 

Sometimes, their methods of obtaining horns can be ludicrous — take, for example, the Irish gang who broke into a series of museums to steal them, or the hunters who currently prospect for woolly rhinos in Siberian permafrost. Most commonly, though, poaching gangs target people living in deprived areas of Africa with scarce economic opportunities. These people bear the brunt of risk, executing rhinos for their horns, which are then trafficked through a string of intermediaries before they arrive at their destinations. 

South Africa provides a hotbed of economic deprivation and marginalisation combined with rich and diverse wildlife — the perfect conditions for poaching to flourish. The country hosts 70% of the world’s remaining rhino population, of which a significant proportion reside in Kruger National Park. Here, thousands of rhinos roam free, alongside heavily armed rangers. Around 150 to 200 suspected poachers were shot dead in the park between 2011 and 2016. 

Kruger National Park borders Mozambique, where many of the poachers originate. Mozambique’s history is intimately intertwined with that of South Africa. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, black citizens in Mozambique — then a Portuguese colony — were forced into wage labour on cotton farms. At the same time, mining had begun to boom in South Africa, and many Mozambicans fled through the border to work the mines instead. 

Later on, after Mozambique had won independence from Portugal, the apartheid-governed South Africa backed the insurgent group Mozambican National Resistance. This prompted a civil war which lasted between 1977 and 1992, brutalising and impoverishing Mozambique. Thousands of refugees escaped once more through the border into South Africa. Mozambique remains today one of the poorest countries in the world.

Consequently, South Africa harbours a large and disproportionately poor Mozambican population, whose livelihoods are precarious. They endure physically intensive work or unemployment in South Africa or return to Mozambique to work on increasingly unproductive farms with little to no support from the government. Given these choices, it is unsurprising that so many turn to poaching. Often, poachers are so poor that their employers are forced to fund the transport, cell phones, and guns necessary to poach.

In response to rising poaching rates, the South African government declared “war” on poaching, appointing Johan Jooste, a white Major General who previously served as director of International Business Development for BAE systems before fighting for the South African Defence Force in the apartheid wars. Jooste was stationed in South West Africa, where the South African state suppressed the Namibian struggle for independence. With regards to poaching, Jooste declared South Africa to be “under attack from foreign nationals” necessitating a “war.” Though he has since toned down this rhetoric due to “public perceptions” the militarisation of anti-poaching measures in Kruger National Park has continued, with park rangers converted under Jooste’s supervision into "paramilitaries."

Between 2010 and 2016, $1.3 billion was pledged by donors towards counteracting wildlife crime in Africa. Over two thirds of this money went towards law enforcement, with less than a third dedicated to preventing poaching with measures like poverty alleviation. As Humphreys and Smith write, the “underclass” of South Africa view counter-poaching efforts as “just another strand in the war on the poor.”

Jane Carruthers suggests that Kruger National Park itself has come to symbolise “white political and economic domination.” This is a pattern visible in the reserve’s history: it was initially constructed as a game reserve by the white Afrikaner elite, forcibly dispelling the thousands of black Africans who lived there, and later became a popular whites-only tourist destination, allowing black people inside only after the fall of apartheid. Today, whilst wealthy tourists delight in spotting megafauna inside the park, the communities surrounding Kruger experience some of the highest rates of poverty in South Africa. 

With all of this being the case, is it any wonder that a study published this year concluded that anti-poaching securitisation measures have done little to actually combat rhino poaching in South Africa? The only truly effective method found by the authors was the use of dehorning - the practice of (painlessly) removing a rhino’s horn every few years, rendering it worthless to poachers and decreasing its individual risk of being poached from 13% to 0.6% Much fanfare has been made about this paper, but little attention has been given to the conclusion where the authors point out that “support[ing] socioeconomic resilience of local people” may be more effective than the current ‘rhino war’ approach to poaching.