Stock theft's boneyard of slow death

An emaciated calf lies motionless at the entrance to the animal pound in the arid Lesotho village of Sehonghong, too weak to drive off the cloud of flies settling on its face.

It is days away from death by starvation and thirst, the victim of animal rustlers. Its inevitable fate is signalled by a macabre fence above its head, where the severed ears of hundreds of stolen South African livestock hang.

Nearby the sun-bleached skeletons of horses, cattle and donkeys dot the hills of Sehonghong, about 30km from the KwaZulu-Natal border as the vulture flies.    

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The village of bones, several kilometres from the closest source of water and grazing, is a testament to stock theft that costs South African agriculture as a whole more than R1.5-billion annually, with nearly 75,000 cases reported to the police throughout the country since 2013.

Lesotho police officer Sergeant John "Rambo" Pokoshoani spends many of his days dragging the animal carcasses — most of them stolen in South Africa and rustled across the border — out of the pound and into the field of bones to be eaten by feral dogs.

"We are hopeless here. We have nothing to give these animals and we have to watch them die," he said.

"We go into the villages to confiscate stolen animals when we get information from our informers. The animals come here and we look at the brands and the ears. If they are from South Africa we talk to the South African police and try find the people to come and fetch their animals but sometimes it is too late," Pokoshoani said.

The Lesotho authorities have no fodder for the impounded animals, so if their rightful owners do not retrieve them quickly, they starve to death.

Before the carcasses are taken out into the field, an ear is cut off to be hung on the fence. Farmers who have lost animals to rustlers can inspect the leathery remains for the tell-tale notches that identify their livestock.

"It hurts me to do this because I have animals of my own," Pokoshoani said. "This is so bad and I am worried now because the winter is coming and things are only going to get worse."

Underberg farmer Steve Black said that in nearly 20 years of rearing horses, he had had nearly 100 stolen and run into Lesotho.

"I have gone into Lesotho more times than I can count to get them back ... I managed to bring about 70 animals home. As for the remaining 30 ... who knows where they are or if they are even alive," he said. 

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"This is our livelihood, we cannot afford to have our animals stolen, and for farmers it ends up being an issue worth billions. To many people it means nothing, but this affects every South African because it influences the prices of the food that you eat," Black said.

"Paying security personnel, informers and then the fuel and vehicle costs, the recovery of one horse sits at nearly R15,000. This is what they are worth to us."

Black said stolen horses went through a traumatic time, being left in the mountains for about two weeks before being re-branded over their existing identifying marks.

"They die a slow and painful death [in the pound]," he said. "We do what we can to bring feed to them but it becomes a money issue. Nothing is for free here."

Cattle farmer Chippy Watson, also of Underberg, said that in 2011 and 2012 he had 103 head of cattle and 13 horses stolen.

"At one point one of the farmers here actually had to stop farming because he was getting cleaned out. In the Swartberg area there were tens of thousands of hectares that they stopped farming because of stock theft," he said.

Watson said farmers conducted countless raids, enlisted informers and put up observation posts in the mountains to stem the tide of stock theft. "We try to avoid having our animals going into the pounds. It is a massive process to get them out ... by the time you get them out they are basically dead."

Bev Seabourne, of the nonprofit Highveld Horse Care Unit, said Lesotho had no budget or resources to care for the animals in its police pounds.

She said her organisation had been providing feed and medical assistance in Lesotho since 2011, and was negotiating with officials for access to the Sehonghong pound.

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sub_head_start Border no hindrance to rustlers sub_head_end

Cross-border theft of cattle, horses and other stock is dominated by highly organised criminal syndicates, which deal an expensive blow to the South African farming sector.

Thousands of animals are driven across the porous mountain border with Lesotho by gangs of rustlers.

Nearly 75,000 cases of stock theft across the country have been reported to police in the past three years, with losses running into the billions. Only one in five of the animals driven into Lesotho are ever recovered.

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Free State Agriculture said farmers on the border continually fell victim. "The theft of stock from South Africa by Lesotho nationals is a substantial problem continuously experienced by commercial and upcoming farmers living adjacent to the Free State and Lesotho border ."

Farms on the border lost livestock worth R800,000 between December and January.

"Towns alongside the border are regarded as hot spots for stock theft," the organisation said.

"It is a concern that stock theft can no longer be regarded as potslag [food for the pot] but has become an organised crime perpetrated by ... syndicates whereby significant numbers of stock are stolen from farms."

In a study last year in the province, Free State Agriculture extrapolated the cost of stock theft over 12 months at more than R1.5-billion. Less than 17% of stock was recovered.

Willie Clack, of the Red Meat Producers' Organisation, said that over and above the losses, the cost of security, police and military patrols ended up being borne by the taxpayer.

"It is not only the economic impact on agriculture that needs to be accounted for, there are other indirect costs such as for the South African army on the border and the costs of the criminal justice system."

Last week, Police Minister Fikile Mbalula announced stricter controls on the movement of livestock with the draft of the Animal Movement and Animal Produce Bill, expected to be submitted to the cabinet in October.

wicksj@sundaytimes.co.za