I just received this from a source in South Africa. Apparently the noose is tightening.

~Alan


http://www.news24.com/SouthAfr...ng-poachers-20100708



Julian Rademeyer, Beeld

Pretoria - Hunting rifles stolen in South Africa are being fitted with silencers and allegedly smuggled into Zimbabwe by a Musina hunter to be used in poaching rhino.

A Beeld investigation reveals that ruthless South African hunters and safari-operators are plundering Zimbabwe's wildlife stocks and making a killing from illegal hunting and the trade in rhino horn.

A Musina hunter, Johan Roos, has been identified as one of the alleged “masterminds” behind illegal rhino hunting in Zimbabwe. He appears to be a hardened poacher with a string of previous convictions.

Beeld has established that on two separate occasions over the past eight months Roos has been identified as the man supplying hunting rifles to poachers and instructing them to hunt rhino.

One of the hunting rifles, a Winchester .375, was stolen during a violent farm attack in Limpopo province and fitted with a silencer before being given to poachers. Silencers are illegal in Zimbabwe.

A recent report by TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, and IUCN, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, showed that since 2006, 95% of the poaching in Africa has occurred in Zimbabwe and South Africa. The report also showed that the conviction rate for rhino crimes in Zimbabwe is only three percent.

In August last year, Roos, 44, was arrested in Zimbabwe.

Wounded poacher

A poacher had been shot dead and another wounded during a “contact” with game scouts. A silenced .303 rifle was found nearby. Roos was identified by the wounded poacher as the supplier of the weapon.

He was detained near the Beitbridge border and held in custody for three days before suddenly being released.

In another incident earlier this year, Roos was identified by another poacher as having supplied him with the silenced Winchester .375 rifle.

Beeld tried unsuccessfully to contact Roos this week.

A man who answered his phone and described himself as Roos's brother, Pieter, said Roos was “completely innocent” and that his name was “mentioned in Zimbabwe by a black who screwed up”.

Roos' cellphone records show that he was in contact with known poachers. His passport indicated that he had visited the country more than 50 times over a two-and-half year period.

According to Pieter, Roos is a “professional hunter” and is currently on holiday in Swaziland.

Roos has been described by the Beitbridge police commanding officer, Colonel Hosiah Mukombero, as a man “believed to be the brains behind the poaching syndicate that is poaching zebras and smuggling hides to South Africa”.

He is also named in a March 2010 report on the conservation status of rhinos in Zimbabwe which was submitted by the country's government to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites).

Prominent Zimbabwean businessman Charles Davy, a key investor and driving force behind the privately owned Bubye Valley Conservancy, believes recent poaching incidents in southern Zimbabwe are “almost 100% South African-linked”.

'Bad bastards'

“These are bad bastards. It started here towards the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 when we lost 12 rhino.

"We were only semi-jacked up and bloody naïve. The poachers got into us very quickly. We didn't even know they were using silenced rifles. Until I saw the first .303 with a silencer I didn't know it was possible to even muffle or silence a high velocity rifle like a .303.”

The smuggling networks are supported by corrupt police and immigration officials, the collapse of law and order in Zimbabwe and lax controls at the Beitbridge border.

Two brothers, one of them involved in a Limpopo gun shop, are also linked to what investigators loosely refer to as the “Musina mafia” - a term for hunters and businessmen involved in illegal hunting. Their names are known to Beeld.

Blondie Leathem, the manager of Mazunga Safaris which is based in the conservancy, works closely with Davy and says bluntly: “If you want to know rage, see a rhino calf that has been standing next to her decaying mother for three days, in 30 degree heat, trying to suckle.”

Zebra skins

He believes the trade in rhino horn grew from the trade in zebra skins.

“The guys involved in zebra are also the guys involved in rhino. There has been talk of zebra skins going through a very high connection at Beitbridge.

"The sheer quantities are staggering. We are talking about thousands of them over the last couple of years. There are places that had 400 or 500 zebra and today there is not one left.

“Here they've stopped poaching zebra because they realise it has to be hit and run.

“Even with five or six of them skinning it, it takes 20 minutes. They realised it was too high a risk for too low a reward.

“It is just rhino at the moment. It virtually takes five minutes with a knife to remove the horn.”

Is it just me, or does it seem that the majority of the time a white guy is involved in something illicit in zim/bots/namibia - it seems to me that it's usually a guy from South Africa with a Dutch sounding last name.

Is there some white african cultural dynamic I'm missing here??

Or am I just reading too much into it...

If the ringleaders in Tanzania, Kenya, or Mozambique are ever caught, they will likely have Arab or Chinese names.

Pretty sad.

A 375 with a silencer?

Unless the ammunition is loaded to travel slower than the speed of sound, surely the sonic boom would be heard?

Right or wrong?

Neil, you are right but the sound gets muffled a lot with normal speed bullets as well so it cannot be heard very far.

Farm attack gun used for poaching
2010-07-10 17:06




Julian Rademeyer
Johannesburg - A Winchester hunting rifle stolen during a violent farm attack in Limpopo has provided a vital link between the so-called “Musina mafia”, rhino poachers operating in southern Zimbabwe and criminal gangs trading in stolen weapons.

The .375 rifle with the serial number G1179783 was seized by Zimbabwean police on April 19 near the Bubye Valley Conservancy, about 90km from the Beitbridge border with South Africa.

It had been fitted with a custom-made silencer. Silencers are illegal in Zimbabwe.

Among the six suspects arrested was Andrew Bvute, a veterinary officer with the Zimbabwean directorate for disease control who has been linked to previous poaching incidents.

He was carrying the rifle when police arrested him and claimed it had been given to him by Musina hunter Johan Roos to shoot rhino. He later retracted this statement.

Bvute was fined only $100 and released.

Beeld traced the weapon to a Limpopo family who were attacked on the farm Nekel, situated 4km from the Mapungubwe archaeological site, on May 8 last year.

The victims, Faan Lemmer snr, 91, his son Faan jnr, 67, and his wife Christie, 60, were terrorised by four armed men for nearly three hours.

Blood everywhere

“They beat me to a pulp,” Lemmer jnr recalled in an interview with Beeld. “There was blood everywhere.

“We were very negligent. Everything was open, but for 41 years it wasn't necessary to lock the doors.”

He and his wife lived a large flat below the main the house where his father lived.

“I had just finished showering and went up to see what was happening at the house.

“When I walked inside, I saw my father's light was burning. He was supposed to be asleep already. I went to look and there stood four men.

They had already attacked his father. “He is deaf and can't hear anything. He didn't have a clue what was going on and couldn't understand their questions.

“They hit him on his left leg.

“They didn't say a word when I arrived. One of them took my arm and they led me out of the house. When I reached the back stoep, they started hitting me. I think it was with an iron bar.

“I passed out. When I came to, I was covered in blood.”

The men demanded “lots of money” and warned: “If you make a noise, we will kill you.”

Said Lemmer: “I knew if I didn't play along, I was dead.”

Lemmer's wife was also tied up. Her hands were bound in front of her. She managed to conceal a small knife under a cardboard box.

The men emptied two gun safes in the main house, taking a pistol and five hunting rifles. They also helped themselves to money, alcohol, R13 000, a camera and car keys.

ANC

In an effort to win them over Lemmer lied and said he had voted for the ANC.

“Fuck the ANC,” one of the men said bluntly.

Thirty minutes after the attackers left, Lemmer's wife cut him free. They spent an uneasy night, waiting for daybreak, before venturing out.

Farm workers found them at 07:00 the next day.

Faan jnr needed 15 stitches to close the wound in his scalp. “My arm was yellow and blue for months. I think I tried to block when they hit me.”

A day later, police arrested a 26-year-old Zimbabwean, Stephen Moleya, and recovered three of the weapons.

But a 9mm pistol and two hunting rifles, a 30-06 and the .375 had vanished without trace.

Investigators believe the .375 was fitted with a silencer in South Africa.

'Musina Mafia'

Two Limpopo gun shop owners have been linked to the “Musina mafia”. Their names are known to Beeld.

On April 17 this year, according to a report filed with the Mwenezi Criminal Investigations Division (CID) in Zimbabwe, anti-poaching teams at the Bubye Valley Conservancy picked up the spoor of two poachers heading into the bush.

Later, the four occupants of a white double-cab bakkie that had been spotted parked on a road near the conservancy were detained and questioned by police.

They alleged that Musina hunter Johan Roos had been with them earlier in the day and identified the vehicle he was driving as a white single-cab Ford Ranger. They said he had hurriedly driven away after noticing a Land Cruiser with CID officers patrolling in the area.

The men were taken into custody and the vehicle impounded.

Two days later, trackers followed the spoor of the two poachers as they backtracked their way out of the conservancy.

CID detectives were alerted and drove to the area in the impounded bakkie. There they waited. Eventually two men emerged from the bush, one of them carrying a .375 silenced rifle.

The two poachers – who were expecting the pick-up vehicle to be there - were caught by surprise by the undercover police and arrested.

The gunman carrying the rifle was later identified as Bvute.

Sophisticated

In recent months, authorities in southern Zimbabwe have seized a .303 rifle fitted with a silencer and another, with a barrel threaded for a silencer, that was hidden in a secret compartment in the tailgate of a Gauteng registered bakkie.

Blondie Leathem, a veteran of Zimbabwe's poaching wars and manager of Mazunga Safaris, which is based in the conservancy, told Beeld: “When one of the scouts fired the .303 it sounded like a .22.

It muffled the blast nearly completely and the crack that followed was the round breaking the sound barrier.

“It was a very sophisticated thing, made by an armourer and custom fitted.”

* Send tip-offs to Media24's investigations team at investigations@media24.com.

For more on Beeld's investigation, tune in to 50/50 at 19:30 on SABC 2 on Monday.



- Beeld

@ TwoZero.

The reason they are all Boers is the same reason that no one in the Gotti family is named Paddy O'Conner. The epicenter for the SA Mafia is based in the old Afrikaner Republics of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. The Free State and Limpopo Provinces of today, where the predominate population are Afrikaners.

My sources tell me that all this really got into full swing during the Rhodesian bush war, when SA police and military intelligence were the money men. They took ivory and rhino horns, converted that into hard currency, and bought military equipment from the French for the Rhodies.

A good place to get rid of rhino horns and ivory is to the Chinese and Arabs, who have a lot of access to raw opium. South Africa had the labs and chemicals to turn that into heroin, and in the 1970-1980s, SA was not looked at by US Customs as a drug trans-shipment country.

Now, there is a lot of US currency that needs to get out of SA and into legitimate businesses in stable, i.e. white dominated, economies. But, with pesky new banking laws, there has to be creative solutions such as spending millions of dollars donating hunts to conservation organization overseas. If it takes spending 3 million in Africa to net 1 million in laundered money, then it is worth the hassle to get the clean money.

The longer that money is left in Africa, the greater the chances someone like Malema will come to power and SA will go the way of the Congo, Angola, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Any country run by blacks is liable to civil war and economic chaos. In fact, more than liable. History shows it is inevitable.

Cheers,

~Alan

quote:

Originally posted by Alan Bunn:
@ TwoZero.

The reason they are all Boers is the same reason that no one in the Gotti family is named Paddy O'Conner. The epicenter for the SA Mafia is based in the old Afrikaner Republics of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. The Free State and Limpopo Provinces of today, where the predominate population are Afrikaners.



~Alan

two zero and Alan you are generalizing now and you are insulting people. I don't know what your grudge is with the Afrikaners but what you are saying is not fair, there is corrupt people in every nation so lets not get into that argument.

I therefore ask you to retract that statement and if you want to shame somebody call him by his name and don't generalize i dont think that is the idea of this forum

I agree 100% with 375fanatic!!!! Generalizations are unfair and dangerous.
There are lots of South Africans with "Dutch sounding last names" in conservation, hunting and professional hunting entities or organizations. As a matter of fact, ALL South Africans I know have these "Dutch sounding last names" and are ethical hunters or support ethical hunting. Plenty of them are members of this forum and post here on a regular basis.
An apology would be a nice gesture.

quote:

Originally posted by pleandro:
An apology would be a nice gesture.

Apologise for what???

Where did anyone say that all White South Africans are bad???

Get a thicker skin! Everyone here knows that the overwhelming majority of white south africans, namibians, zimbos etc, are good peoples...

My question was no different than someone asking me why the New York crime bosses all have Italian sounding last names. Now if I explain why Cosa Nostra is an Italian/Sicillian organisation, does that mean I am painting all Italian Americans with the same brush??? No! That would be a ridiculous assumption!

Or how about if I ask someone to explain to me why the IRA has an awful lot of Irish sounding last names amongst its members? Do you think they would be tarring all the Irish with too big a brush???

Some may be making broad generalisations about peoples intentions here, but I don't think I nor Alan Bunn are the ones doing it.


.

quote:

Originally posted by TwoZero:
Is it just me, or does it seem that the majority of the time a white guy is involved in something illicit in zim/bots/namibia - it seems to me that it's usually a guy from South Africa with a Dutch sounding last name.

Is there some white african cultural dynamic I'm missing here??

Or am I just reading too much into it...

Actually mate, with all due respect, I for one find your statement rather sweeping and incidentally somewhat inaccurate in assuming all white Africans share a similar culture.

I have lots of very good white African friends, including many Afrikaaners (including 375fanatic) but it would be a very big mistake to think all white African cultures are anywhere near the same.

And incidentally, I can think of several non Dutch sounding last names that have a reputation for flakiness and dodgy dealing in Africa........

quote:

Originally posted by shakari:
Actually mate, with all due respect, I for one find your statement rather sweeping and incidentally somewhat inaccurate in assuming all white Africans share a similar culture.

I have lots of very good white African friends, including many Afrikaaners (including 375fanatic) but it would be a very big mistake to think all white African cultures are anywhere near the same.

Instead of "white" I should have been more specific to which african cultural group I was referring to... (I'm aware there's more than one). But then I don't read into my question what others seem to be.

Goes to show that the internet is not the best medium through which to gauge someones intentions sometimes. Especially concerning what seems to be a very touchy subject.

It's not about black or white or even cultural groupings within black or white..... it's just that like everywhere else, Africa has it's fair share and probably more than it's fair share of dodgy bastards.

The trick is to avoid 'em.

I am not slamming the Boers. Most of my friends in SA are Boere and they have been very good to me.

The point I was making is the reason the poachers have Afrikaans names is because that is the predominant culture in that area, and the New York mafia all have Italian names for the same reason.

I think you are all being touchy because of all the bad publicity does involve Boers, but the fact is any criminal syndicate is going to mostly recruit from their own culture. It just makes sense from a security standpoint.

If you are offended by this, then I suppose you will just have to be offended. It does not change the reality of who is doing the poaching.

~Alan

Alan,

Mate, I don't think the criticism was about this particular incident or the people involved in it.

It was about the broader suggestion that all the dodgy bastards are from one particular group.... which obviously isn't true.

Look for example at all the black African politicians who are of dubious integrity (to say the least) or at people such as ICD as another example of regular dodgy dealers...... and I'm sure we can all think of many more without too much trouble.

About the only general truism I can think of about the Afrikaaners is one should never try to keep up with them when it comes to boozing because it just ain't possible!

Mafia poaching!

By Garikai Mazara and Itai Mazire.

July 18, 2010

CIRCUMSTANCES surrounding the recent killing of 10 elephants in the Gonarezhou National Park are shrouded in mystery amid indications that highly organised poaching syndicates using aircraft, powerful rifles and other modern machinery are on the prowl in the poorly patrolled wildlife sanctuary.

Investigations and media reports in South Africa last week showed that some of the syndicates involve South Africans and private players in the wildlife industry who are poaching rhino and elephant on a large scale in the south-easterly park.
Soon after The Sunday Mail established after a visit to Gonarezhou last weekend that some private airstrips were being used as “loading” platforms by poachers, media reports in South Africa said hunting rifles stolen in that country were being fitted with silencers and smuggled into Zimbabwe for poaching.
Although The Sunday Mail could not independently verify the identities of some of the suspected poaching masterminds, the Beeld newspaper of South Africa named Musina-based Afrikaner hunter Johan Roos as one of the principal figures behind the syndicates.
A Beeld investigation reveals that ruthless South African hunters and safari operators are plundering Zimbabwe’s wildlife stocks and making a killing from illegal hunting and the trade in rhino horn.
Roos appears to be a hardened poacher with a string of previous convictions, the newspaper reported.
The newspaper reported that two poachers who were recently arrested after coming into contact with game rangers in Zimbabwe had named Roos as the supplier of their weapons, a Winchester .375 and a .303 rifle.
Roos, whose passport reportedly shows that he has visited Zimbabwe at least 50 times in the past two and half years, was arrested by Zimbabwean authorities in August last year on suspicion of poaching.
He was released after spending three days in police cells at Beitbridge.
Officer commanding Beitbridge police Hosiah Mukombero recently said he believed Roos to be the brains behind a poaching syndicate smuggling hides, elephant tusks and rhino horns to South Africa and other countries.
Roos was named in a March 2010 report on the conservation status of rhinos in Zimbabwe which was submitted by the Government to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites).
During a field visit to Gonarezhou last week, a Sunday Mail crew came across the skeletal remains of 10 elephants reportedly killed early last month along Mutandanjiva River near the road to Ndali communal lands in the north-eastern part of Gonarezhou.
All the elephant tasks were missing and appeared to have been removed using sophisticated equipment.
Although there were various theories surrounding the shooting of the elephants, the poaching appeared to have been a highly sophisticated job, which might have involved aircraft and high-powered guns. Parks officials came across the carcasses as they were doing vegetation mapping.
Speaking off the record, game rangers at Gonarezhou said prior to the discovery of the dead elephants, there were reports from the northern-most base camp, Makandwamaviri, of the sighting of two or three light airplanes that were circling suspiciously.
No one took heed of the report and days later, it was discovered that a herd of elephants had been shot dead.
The sighting of the planes was immediately linked to the shooting.
According to the rangers, it was not easy to kill a family of elephants unless an aircraft was used.
Noise from aircraft was known to confuse elephants which could then easily be killed.
With each tusk weighing between 20 and 35 kilogrammes, the carrying of the 20 tusks would have required manpower in the region of 15-20 men.
“The fact that there were no footprints to suggest the presence of such a number of people pointed to the probability of the sighted airplanes having been used to airlift the tusks.”
As well, when organising such a high-risk job, there was no point in engaging as many as 15-20 people because this increased the risk of getting caught, explained a ranger.
The tusks were neatly cut off, probably using chainsaws and other high-powered machines.
Parks Authority spokesperson Caroline Washaya-Moyo said they were still conducting investigations into the matter.
“There have been no arrests at the moment and we are still carrying out high-level investigations. These investigations can last for three years,” she said.
Interestingly, the Parks Authority manager for Gonarezhou, Daniel Sithole, was picked up by Chiredzi police the week the dead elephants were discovered. He was released shortly after questioning but what raised eyebrows was why a parks manager was picked up when he reports to an area manager.
When The Sunday Mail visited the park last week, several loopholes were evident in the security of both the national park and the adjoining Malilangwe Conservancy, which is a private enterprise.
For instance, at the Gonarezhou entrance, tourists were asked if they wanted to be accompanied or not.
The entry fee was US$4 per person whereas a guide cost US$5 per person. For someone intending to poach, this was a pittance, vis-à-vis the expected returns.
It was also observed that the game rangers were not enough to patrol the 5 000 square kilometre park, the second biggest in the country.
Each ranger patrols an average of 56 square kilometres per 10 days.
The game reserve is Zimbabwe’s gateway to the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park and has 9 123 elephants, according to a 2009 study by the Frankfurt Zoological Society. The country has more than 100 000 elephants and the Parks Authority has more than 34 tonnes of raw ivory worth US$5,1 billion in stock.
Airfields in the Lowveld appear to have lax security, creating room for smuggling and other illicit activities
When then opposition leader and now Prime Minister Mr Morgan Tsvangirai was on the run a few years ago, he sneaked back into the country from South Africa through Buffalo Range Airport, evading national security personnel.
Recently, it was reported that Colombian music star Shakira visited the country through, yet again, Buffalo Range Airport while unconfirmed reports said a very high-ranking Italian government official also visited a private conservancy near Chiredzi, apparently without the knowledge of authorities in Harare.
Concern has been raised on the porous nature of the airfields and whether the conservancy operators, some of whom charge up to US$800 per person per night, are paying full taxes to the Government given the highly secretive nature of visits by overseas celebrities and VVIPs.
Contacted to comment on how operations at private airfields were regulated and monitored, Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe (CAAZ) spokesperson Mrs Anna Hungwe said they were mainly involved in safety oversight on all airfields in the country which they licensed annually.
“CAAZ have safety oversight on all the three categories (of airports) and ensure that all categories meet the required standards to be operational. CAAZ licenses all airports, aerodromes and airstrips and these licences are renewed every year,” said Mrs Hungwe.
The Air Force of Zimbabwe could not be reached to comment on whether it had the capacity to monitor the country’s airspace or to detect low-flying aircraft in remote areas.

Hope we can all agree that there are low lifes everywhere in the world. If it wasn't rhino, ele or zebra it'd be drugs or something else. Criminal leanings have nothing to do with hunting. A poacher is typically involved in all sorts of other underhanded dealings as well. Unfortunately the general public don't make that connection. Poaching is simply associated with ligitimate hunting and we all get a blackeye as a result.
Those who read into such accounts a social or ethinic connection simply because of the individuals involved are missing it entirely! Yes there are some localized "cultures" all around the world where lawlessness is inherent but it is GENERAL lawlessness not poaching, drugs, diamonds, human trafficing or any one specific thing attributable to a whole nation. The suggestion that White south africans have some "cultural" leaning toward poaching, racism, etc. is akin to suggesting that all white americans have some predisosition to be drug dealers, and hit men! REDICULOUS!!!!!!!!

"Columbian music star" or "RSA based Brit PH" ???