Kruger National Park’s most pressing challenge is no longer rhino poaching. It is the internal corruption that has spread as poaching syndicates and organised crime have taken root around the park.
Context
For more than a decade, Kruger National Park faced a relentless onslaught of rhino poaching. Between 2011 and 2020, the park’s white rhino population fell by 75%, from about 10 621 animals to 2 607. Its population of critically endangered black rhinos more than halved, from about 415 in 2013 to about 202 in 2020.
The paper argues that internal corruption is now the greatest threat to the park, and that it is a symptom of a breakdown in trust, staff cohesion and professionalism. As many as 40% of the park’s law enforcement staff are believed to be aiding poaching networks or to be involved in corrupt or criminal activity in some way.
Most of Kruger’s staff live in the villages and towns around the park, where they are exposed to deeply entrenched criminal syndicates. The western boundary of the park’s southern half, which runs through Mpumalanga from Hoedspruit to Komatipoort, is a landscape of fear in which illicit markets, violence and murder are common. The Hawks investigator Lieutenant-Colonel Leroy Bruwer was assassinated in 2020. The Timbavati head ranger Anton Mzimba was killed in 2022.
Recent arrests of park staff after lengthy financial investigations show that a renewed drive against corruption is bearing fruit. Lasting progress will require political support, clear law enforcement strategies against organised crime around the park and long-term investment.
The paper is based on fieldwork in Mpumalanga and Kruger National Park between October 2022 and January 2023, and on further interviews in Johannesburg and Pretoria. Interviews were conducted with 15 people from the wildlife, law enforcement and security sectors, most of them on condition of anonymity.
Key findings
- Between 2011 and 2020, Kruger’s white rhino population fell by 75%, from about 10 621 animals to 2 607.
- Internal corruption is the greatest threat facing the park. It reflects a breakdown in trust, staff cohesion and professionalism.
- Toxic politics, deep-seated inequality, corruption and embedded organised crime have profoundly affected the park and the communities around it.
- Crime and corruption in Kruger cannot be understood in isolation from organised crime in Mpumalanga, including kidnappings, cash-in-transit heists, ATM bombings, illegal mining and extortion.
- Renewed efforts to combat corruption in the park, and a new openness about the extent of the problem, need to be supported by a holistic response.
Recommendations
- Replace short-term, reactive policing with a long-term strategy to disrupt the key criminal networks in Mpumalanga, backed by a prosecutor-driven approach to organised crime.
- Strengthen financial investigation and intelligence-gathering skills in the police and the provincial Hawks, and do far more to protect investigators and prosecutors working on high-risk cases.
- Secure a long-term commitment from political leaders, SANParks and its board to address corruption in the park transparently, fairly and with consistent consequences.
- Implement the park’s integrity management policy, including background checks, polygraph tests and, where necessary, lifestyle audits for all staff.
- Rebuild professionalism and trust among staff, and give rangers greater support, including protection from approaches by criminal networks.
- Form partnerships with banks, auditing firms and the Hawks to investigate financial flows between poaching networks and park staff.
- Create an independent whistleblowing mechanism with the necessary protections and rewards.
Watch
Cite as
Rademeyer, J. (2023). Landscape of fear: crime, corruption and murder in greater Kruger. ENACT Research Paper 36. Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies.