A poaching gang involved in the slaughter of South African rhinoceros in the Kruger National Park came close to murdering two western journalists in Mozambique, according to their own account in the latest issue of the English version of “Spiegel Online”.
Garbled reports had circulated in Maputo that the two men, German reporter Bartholomaus Grill and Swedish photographer Toby Selander, were arrested by the Mozambican police in the southern district of Massingir. The reality, as reported by Grill, was much more frightening.
The two men were reporting in the illicit trade in rhino horns.
According to Grill, “we were hoping to follow the supply chain from the slaughter of the rhinos in South Africa through middlemen in Mozambique to the horns’ ultimate buyers in Vietnam”.
According to the South African statistics, as many as 80 per cent of the poachers who kill rhinos in the Kruger Park come from Mozambique.
Massingir district borders on the Kruger Park, and the district capital, Massingir town, has become notorious as a centre of the illegal trade.
Grill writes that about twenty leaders of the poaching gangs are thought to live in Massingir “and their houses are unmistakable: ostentatious villas rising up out of the bush between shacks and adobe houses with tiled exterior walls and tinted windows covered with metal bars”.
The two reporters were seeking a notorious gang leader named Navara. The administration of Mozambique’s Limpopo National Park (PNL) told them that his real name is Simon Ernesto Valoi, and that he lives in a village called Mavodze, just inside the PNL. So, without any protection, Grill and Selander went and knocked on Navara’s front door.
Grill believes they made a mistake by not advising village chiefs first. But his own account makes it quite clear that the real mistake was their complete lack of security. Outside the house they spoke to a woman, who turned out to be Navaras wife. She rang her husband, and he was furious to find that a couple of foreign journalists were looking for him.
They soon discovered Navara’s power. “Minutes later we are surrounded by 50 or 60 people, apparently mobilized by Navara”, Grill reported. “Young men threaten us with their fists and curse at us: “Spies! Secret police from South Africa!””
“The villagers are afraid of the poaching boss, but they also venerate him”, says Grill. “He is believed to employ 10 to 15 hunting teams, each consisting of three men. On bright, moonlit nights, they cross the border into South Africa with one person carrying a rifle or the tranquilizer gun and the second an axe to chop off the rhino’s horn. The third person is charged with hauling provisions. It is dangerous work. Between 2008 and 2014, 363 poachers were killed by South African security forces”.
But it was now Grill and Selander who were in mortal danger. A gang leader named Justice Ngovene, who uses the alias “Nyimpini”, turned up and accused them of entering the village without permission.
They feared they were about to be attacked when Navara himself appeared “He is accompanied by a half-dozen bodyguards”, Grill reported. “Navara has a reputation for being extremely violent and he orders us to go to the police station where he wants to press charges for trespassing”.
“We are interrogated in a small, windowless room. Where are you from? Who sent you? The two gang leaders – Navara and Ngovene – ask the questions while the village policeman only occasionally interjects”, noted Grill. “The bodyguards threaten to rape us, to kill us and to burn our corpses. The village policeman takes notes, his hands trembling”.
The interrogation in Mavodze took two-and-a-half hours, and then the two journalists were taken to police headquarters in Massingir town. “They want to separate the two of us”, said Grill, “and when we protest to the village policeman, Navara growls: “I’m in command here!””
Navara’s supporters gathered in front of the village police post, menacing the reporters who feared they were about to be lynched. Ngovene dissuaded the mob from attacking, and Grill and Selander were driven to Massingir town in the poachers’ vehicles.
In Massingir town a second interrogation began, and the rhino poachers again sat in on the questioning, making it clear that it was they, not the police, who held the real power. One of the gang “threatens that we’ll be thrown in there, alongside imprisoned murderers. “And during the night we will sort you out.””
Grill remarked that “For Navara, it wouldn’t be a problem. Everybody in Massingir knows that he works with the police. He supposedly even arms his teams of poachers by “leasing” confiscated assault rifles from the local police station”.
“The station chief, a man named Cambaco, berates us as outlaws and is openly on Navara’s side”, Grill continued. “His behavior only changes when his cell phone rings. The caller is his senior-most supervisor, the national head of police, who has been alerted to our situation by the German Embassy in Maputo”.
Even then, Grill and Selander feared that Navara and his men might murder them as they left the police station for their sleeping quarters in a tourist lodge. They avoided this possibility by bribing Camboco. For 250 US dollars, he assigned two policemen with AK-47 assault rifles to look after them.
The following day it was the two reporters and not the poachers who appeared before the local court where a prosecutor told them they were “under investigation” and might face trial on a charge of trespassing. Nonetheless they were able to leave the poacher-held region, and were received by a delegate from the Swedish embassy in the town of Macia. But only after it transpired that no charges had been filed in Massingir, were they allowed to leave the country.
Grill discovered that Navara is already wanted in South Africa on charges of murder. On 3 February 2009 a woman named Marilese Meyer watched helplessly while Navara stole her family’s car and gunned down her husband. She was later able to identify Navara from photographs.
“Why is this dangerous criminal allowed to still walk around freely?” Marilise Meyer asks.
It’s a good question. Instead of being extradited to stand trial in South Africa, it seems that Navara currently runs the district of Massingir as a state within a state.