Counter-poaching operations in South Africa’s so-called ‘rhino wars’ have seen
increasing use of kinetic strategies and tactics. It can be argued that this follows
the country’s historical tendency to react to threats with confrontation in the first
instance rather than negotiation, as leaders invoke images of ‘backs-to-the-wall’
isolation. During the apartheid period the National Party strongly promoted patriotism
and self-sacrifice, portraying South Africa as facing ‘total onslaught’; today,
the rhetoric of ‘rhino wars’ is often framed in similar terms, not least because the
person leading the rhinoceros counter-poaching campaign, Major General Johan
Jooste (retired), was himself heavily involved in the ‘apartheid wars’ in the latter
half of the twentieth century.
As part of his counter-poaching plan, General Jooste has fused a violent
poaching narrative with broader issues of national security, such as concern over
South Africa’s porous borders and transnational crime. The ‘Jooste war’ has thereby
come to combine rhino counter-poaching with broader geostrategic interests in
a process that might be described as the ‘rhinofication’ of South African security.
The intensification of the counter-poaching strategy is clearly part of a trend that
has witnessed the increasing militarization of wildlife management, the physical
manifestation of this approach also bears resemblance to some notable developments
in late-modern warfare. These developments have seen an emphasis on the
close targeting of individuals or groups, broadly identified in the current military
argot as ‘man-hunting’ or ‘targeted killings’. The combative language suggests
that a policy of enhanced confrontation with the poachers is being ramped up.