Richard Slatter
Rhino horn bust at Battery beach, in front of the old Natal ComandPicture: Richard Slatter
The international and national outcry over rhino poaching was cited as being a weighty factor yesterday in the denial of bail to three men allegedly caught in a police trap trying to sell a horn on Durban’s beachfront in March.
“The court will not succumb to public pressure but will give consideration to the public outburst… it cannot shut its eyes and ears to what is going on. This is a matter of extreme public interest.
“Everyone is crying out loud for something to be done to stop the extinction of the rhino,” Durban magistrate Anita Govender said yesterday. The other consideration, she said, in refusing bail to Rajen Moodley, Sithembiso Luthuli and Samkelo Sibiya, was that they had been “caught red-handed” and their “wheeling and dealing” had been caught on video.
The three, whom investigating officer Warrant Officer Jean Pierre van Zyl-Roux alleged were part of a larger syndicate, were arrested on March 18 at Battery Beach. It is alleged they had been trying to sell a 6.5kg horn – worth R3 million – to police agents for R1.5m.
Yesterday, prosecutor Krishen Shah told the court that rhino horn was now more valuable than “gold and platinum put together”. He said that, in response to the poaching crisis, a moratorium had been place on the sale of any horn. It was also illegal to possess one without a permit.
He said a horn could only be considered a “trophy” and possessed with a permit if it were attached to a head.
In this matter, the accused did not have a permit “otherwise they would have simply submitted it to the court”, and the horn was not attached to a head but wrapped in a cloth in a bag.
He conceded that the horn was “old” but said, “like a firearm, it does not matter if it is 100 years old”.
The magistrate did not make reference in her ruling on bail to the protests outside the court during previous court appearances by the three men. But she acknowledged that she had been handed a petition with signatures of people asking that bail be denied.
She also noted that there had been government intervention in the form of the moratorium.
“There may be lots of rhino horns in cupboards, but the moratorium does not permit their sale… and that ban applies to everyone.”
She also noted that while the three men had said in their affidavits before the court that they would all plead not guilty, they had not given an indication of their defence. They will appear in court again on July 6.
