Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 2, 1995 TAG: 9511020090
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PATRICK McDOWELL ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: MAPUTO, MOZAMBIQUE LENGTH: Medium
The endless bush of Mozambique screams with silence. It stands stripped of wildlife by three decades of war and what now is emerging as a vast, systematic slaughter of animals encouraged by the armed forces of apartheid-era South Africa.
A new judicial inquiry in South Africa reveals that military and intelligence units trafficked in poached ivory and rhino horn to finance civil wars the regime fanned in Mozambique, Angola and Namibia during the 1970s and '80s.
Although South Africa has long boasted of leadership in conservation, the evidence suggests some in the white-minority establishment wasn't bothered by slaughtering elephants and rhinoceroses by the thousands in neighboring nations.
South Africa kept the wars alive to destabilize hostile black-ruled neighbors. The chaos allowed armed factions on all sides to massacre wildlife for food, personal profit and war funds.
In Mozambique alone, half a dozen armies used everything from assault rifles to aircraft to slaughter animals. Under the cover of civil war, 90 percent of Mozambique's elephants were butchered.
``Helicopters were used to absolutely decimate wildlife,'' conservationist Paul Dutton said. ``With a helicopter gunship, you could annihilate a whole river of hippos.'' Their teeth would be carved for decorations in Asia.
Peace returned to Mozambique three years ago, and officials rejoice that some surviving elephants have emerged from hiding. But the legacy of war grips the countryside, where one can travel for hours and see nothing larger than a bird.
White rhinoceroses, reintroduced to Mozambique in the 1960s, became locally extinct during the war. Only a handful of rare black rhinos are left. The elephant population fell from 66,500 in 1974 to an estimated 7,000 in 1989.
Environmentalists long accused the South African military of playing a big role in elephant and rhino poaching - killing animals themselves or getting allies to do it, then arranging for tusks and horns to be transported out of war zones and sold.
``This was an open secret,'' said Allan Thornton, chairman of the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency.
In 1988, the South African army cleared itself of wrongdoing in an internal inquiry. That remains the official verdict until a new, independent commission appointed by President Nelson Mandela's government issues its report early next year.
Judge Mark Kumleben's inquiry recently heard four weeks of testimony, mostly from ex-military and intelligence men. Some of the evidence alleges:
South Africa set up a front company in 1977 to fly weapons to Angolan rebels and fly out poached ivory to pay for them. A general claimed the traffic stopped in 1979 - a year South Africa issued permits to import 3,911 elephants tusks and 700 rhino horns from Angola. But traders testified that South Africa's army kept moving ivory out of Angola throughout the 1980s. Similar networks existed in Mozambique.
South African commandos in Namibia would cross the Zambezi River into Zambia in speedboats at night and return before dawn. One soldier said that the raiding parties would leave base with empty wooden crates. On their return, the crates held elephants tusks and rhino horns.
Environmental groups investigating wildlife trafficking discovered that some dealers were actually members of the South African military, according to a confidential report in 1989 prepared by the World Wide Fund for Nature.
South Africa was not alone in poaching in Mozambique. Of the six armies that fought there from the 1960s until a cease-fire in 1992, possibly only the Portuguese abstained.
by CNB