This is an open letter to Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment David Maynier
Dear Minister Maynier,
You have hardly had time to settle into the portfolio, and already one of its hardest questions is on your desk. The Northern Cape High Court has refused government leave to appeal in the Diedericks rhino horn matter (as reported here by the Daily Maverick). A further petition may still be considered. That decision will send a signal far beyond one breeder, one permit, or one stockpile of horn.
The Sustainable Use Coalition Southern Africa (SUCo-SA) asks you to take the harder, better course: accept the judgment, implement it properly, and use it to build a clean national framework for lawful, traceable rhino horn derived from living, protected rhinos.
This is not a call for a free-for-all. It is a call for government to apply the law without fear, and without pretending that court-confirmed legal pathways disappear because activists dislike them.
Nearly fifty years of prohibition have not ended demand
International commercial trade in rhino horn has effectively been closed under CITES since the late 1970s. That is almost a lifetime of policy. It has not removed demand. It has not removed criminal profit. It has not removed the incentive to poach. In South Africa, the crisis escalated after 2007 and became a national security and conservation emergency.
That history matters. A policy that has failed for nearly five decades should not be defended as if failure is proof of virtue. If anything, the long ban teaches a hard lesson: when demand remains and legal supply is blocked, illegal supply becomes more valuable.
This is not a new insight. The late Dr Ian Player, one of the greatest rhino conservation figures South Africa has produced, came to support legal horn trade as part of the suite of measures needed to save rhinos. Former ministers, government policy processes, private rhino custodians and international rhino specialists have all recognised the same basic point in different ways: enforcement alone is not enough if the economic foundations of rhino protection collapse.
What the court has really said
The public debate is already being pushed into a familiar corner: trade versus conservation, money versus morality, private interest versus rhinos. That is not what this case is about.
The Diedericks judgment deals with CITES as part of South African law, and with the route available where horn comes from rhinos bred and kept in a registered conservation operation. The court did not invent a loophole. It read the treaty and our biodiversity law together, and held that the relevant CITES exemption could not simply be ignored.
The later judgment refusing leave to appeal is just as important. The court was not persuaded that another court would probably come to a different conclusion. In plain language, the State was told that its legal objections were not strong enough to justify dragging this on.
That matters. South Africa is a constitutional state. Government cannot ask citizens to obey the law, and then avoid the law when it produces an outcome that is politically awkward.
Your own science points in the same direction
Minister, you need not take SUCo-SA’s word for the conservation logic. Look to the State’s own Scientific Authority.
The 2026 non-detriment finding for southern white rhinoceros records that the ongoing CITES prohibition on trade in rhino horn has proven detrimental to the survival of the species in South Africa. It also records that trade in horn from captive breeding operations is unlikely to be detrimental where the standards for captive breeding and animal wellbeing are met.
That is not a slogan. It is the State’s own published conservation science. It should carry more weight than the loudest press release from organisations that offer no workable plan to pay for rhino protection on the ground.
The economic warning is also plain. IUCN/TRAFFIC reporting has warned that the poaching upsurge increased protection costs, depressed live rhino values, weakened incentives and made it increasingly difficult for private owners and custodians to fund rhino conservation. The DA’s own natural resources policy recognised more than a decade ago that legalising rhino horn trade was one possible response to reduce illegal killing, and that it could earn revenue for both state conservation authorities and private rhino owners to improve protection and expand rhino populations. It also said any such framework would have to be of the highest order. That is precisely what SUCo-SA asks you to build.
The Department appears to have known the legal answer already
Before any further petition is authorised, we respectfully urge you to call for and read the Department’s own legal work on this issue.
SUCo-SA is aware of a DFFE legal vetting memorandum dated 1 August 2022, prepared by the Directorate: Law Reform. It is not a lobbyist note and it is not an industry opinion. It is internal departmental legal analysis. On the material before us, that memorandum recorded that Article VII(5) of CITES forms part of South Africa’s domestic legal regime, that a certificate may be used for the relevant captive-bred route, and that the permit should be granted if the Management Authority is satisfied that the horns are from animals bred in captivity as contemplated in the applicable CITES framework.
In other words, the Department’s own legal machinery appears to have reached, in substance, the same destination now reached by the Court. If officials are advising you to petition further, they should first be asked to explain that earlier advice, why it was not followed, and why public money should now be spent litigating against both the Court and the Department’s own previous legal analysis.
That is a governance question before it is a political one.
This is how CITES was always meant to work
CITES is not an animal-rights treaty. It is not a blanket ban on wildlife trade. It is a trade-control treaty. It works through listings, source codes, permits, certificates, scientific findings, documentation and enforcement.
It also recognises a basic conservation reality: source matters. A specimen stolen through poaching is not the same thing as a specimen lawfully derived from a registered and accountable operation. The law must be able to tell the difference. If it cannot, criminals benefit.
For years, South Africa has allowed the value of rhino horn to sit almost entirely in the hands of illegal syndicates. Those syndicates carry none of the costs. They do not feed rhinos. They do not pay vets. They do not fix fences. They do not employ anti-poaching teams. They do not maintain habitat. They kill, move product, corrupt, and disappear.
Legal custodians are expected to do the opposite. They must keep rhinos alive, protect them, account for them, and pay for that every month.
A law that leaves all value to criminals while loading all costs onto lawful custodians is not a conservation model. It is a slow bleed.
South Africa is not starting from nothing
The objection will be raised that lawful trade cannot be controlled. That argument ignores what South Africa already has.
For more than a decade, the country has built a control architecture around rhino and rhino horn: permits, registered operations, horn marking, microchips where required, DNA sampling, RHODIS, stock records, secure storage, issuing-authority oversight, Management Authority certification, national record systems and criminal enforcement tools.
Those tools must be tightened where necessary. They must be audited. They must be applied without favour. But they do exist. The task now is not to invent regulation from nothing; it is to apply existing tools to the court-confirmed legal route and build perhaps the most traceable and accountable legal wildlife-product trade system in the world.
If an applicant cannot prove source, refuse that application. If a horn cannot be matched to records, refuse that horn. If chain of custody is broken, refuse that export. That is regulation. What should not happen is the old trick of using implementation risks as an excuse to deny the legal route altogether.
The criminal monopoly must be broken
The strongest argument for a lawful route is not sentiment. It is the market as it exists today.
Demand for rhino horn already exists. That is why poaching exists. The choice is not between demand and no demand. The choice is between criminal supply, with dead rhinos at the source, and controlled legal supply from rhinos that remain alive and protected.
A lawful system does not end the need for enforcement. It gives enforcement a sharper tool. It separates documented horn from illegal horn. It creates a paper trail, a DNA trail, a chain of custody, an accountable permit holder and an accountable authority.
The present black-market monopoly is irrational, cruel and profitable. It is profitable precisely because legal custodians have been denied a workable way to realise value from rhinos without killing them.
The Diedericks judgment is therefore a game-changer. It tells owners, investors and communities that the law may still recognise rhinos as living assets, not only as liabilities waiting to be poached.
Money from wildlife is not dirty. Poaching money is dirty.
One of the strangest claims in this debate is that conservation becomes tainted the moment money enters the picture. That argument should be rejected plainly.
There is already money in rhino conservation. There is money in land. Money in security. Money in feed, water, capture, veterinary work, monitoring, compliance, vehicles, insurance and staff. The only question is who pays, and who benefits.
At present, the lawful custodian pays and the criminal syndicate profits. That is not morally superior. It is absurd.
South Africa built much of its private wildlife estate because policy once understood incentives. Wildlife returned to land where it had value. Habitat was kept because wildlife could pay its way. Jobs followed. Hunting, tourism, live sales and breeding all played a part. That history is not an embarrassment. It is one of the few conservation recoveries in the modern world that South Africa can honestly claim as its own.
The conservation test is not whether money changes hands, nor whether an animal or biological product is used. The test is whether the use is lawful, regulated, traceable, sustainable and beneficial to conservation and people.
Rhino cannot be carved out of that logic because horn is politically uncomfortable. If a rhino can safely and lawfully produce value while staying alive, that value should help pay for its protection.
The community opportunity is real
This judgment should not become a private-sector-only conversation. If handled well, it can open a serious transformation pathway.
Communal landholders, community trusts, traditional authorities, land reform projects and emerging wildlife enterprises have too often been told that rhinos are too expensive, too risky, or too politically sensitive. That becomes a self-fulfilling answer. If rhinos cannot generate lawful value, only the already wealthy can carry them.
A traceable, lawful horn economy changes the calculation. It can make partnerships possible. It can help pay for security. It can support jobs in places where jobs are scarce. It can make rhino custodianship a real option in landscapes where communities own land but lack the cash flow needed to hold high-value wildlife safely.
This will need standards. Nobody serious disputes that. A community rhino project must have lawful custodianship, proper governance, veterinary support, security, stock records, horn audits, forensic records and honest revenue controls. But those are reasons to build the pathway, not reasons to close it.
For too long, transformation in wildlife has meant meetings, speeches and pilot projects. Rhino custodianship backed by lawful value can mean ownership.
Commercial conservation should not be treated as a sin
The court decided the case before it. That is enough for the immediate decision now facing you. Implement that route properly, and then build the wider framework honestly for the other source codes and categories that CITES itself recognises.
The broader principle should not be controversial: neither CITES nor South African biodiversity law says conservation must be poor to be genuine.
CITES distinguishes between source, purpose and risk. It recognises wild specimens, captive-bred specimens, registered operations, permits, certificates and different levels of control. The legal question is therefore not whether revenue is involved. The question is which route applies, whether the source is lawful, whether the operation is properly registered, whether domestic and CITES conditions are met, and whether the system prevents laundering.
A commercial rhino enterprise should not get a free pass. It should meet a high bar. But if it meets that bar, it should not be rejected simply because it intends to earn revenue. Revenue is what pays for the rhino.
The real conservation test is not whether the operator makes money. It is whether the system keeps rhinos alive, funds protection, prevents laundering, supports habitat, and moves value away from criminals.
Answer the critics, but do not be governed by them
The usual objections are already being raised: trade will stimulate demand; enforcement will become harder; horn may be laundered; third countries may be used as transit points.
These are not silly concerns. They are also not reasons to ignore a judgment.
If demand is the concern, the honest starting point is that demand already exists and is already being supplied by criminals. If enforcement is the concern, then use the control architecture already available: DNA records, RHODIS, microchips where appropriate, horn marking, secure storage, independent audits, permit-linked inventories, export documentation, source verification, counterpart notification where appropriate, and severe penalties for breach.
What should not happen is the old trick of using implementation risks as an excuse to deny the legal route altogether.
What we ask of you now
Minister, SUCo-SA urges you to do the following:
• Do not petition further. A reflexive appeal will look like politics, not governance.
• Call for the 2022 DFFE Law Reform legal vetting memorandum and require officials to reconcile any current advice with that earlier departmental analysis.
• Instruct DFFE to work with provincial issuing authorities on a uniform Article VII and source-code implementation protocol.
• Require proper safeguards: DNA, RHODIS linkage where applicable, horn marking, stock audits, secure storage, chain-of-custody records, proper export documentation, clear notification to relevant counterpart authorities where appropriate, and independent compliance checks.
• Create a transformation route for communal and emerging rhino custodians who can meet the standards through partnerships and audited governance.
• Speak clearly to the public. A poached horn and a lawfully documented horn from a living, protected rhino are not the same thing.
• Engage CITES counterparts confidently. South Africa should explain that it is applying CITES, not avoiding it.
• Convene a practical technical roundtable with government, rhino custodians, community representatives, forensic specialists, enforcement bodies, legal experts and sustainable-use organisations.
A chance to lead
You will be told that accepting this judgment will hurt South Africa’s reputation. We believe the opposite.
South Africa’s reputation is not protected by pretending that lawful wildlife custodians are the problem while criminal syndicates own the functioning market. It is protected when government applies the law, strengthens controls, supports those who keep wildlife alive, and refuses to let slogans stand in for policy.
The Diedericks judgment is not the end of rhino protection. It is a chance to make rhino protection more honest.
It can restore confidence in rhino ownership. It can bring new investors and communities into custodianship. It can shift value away from dead rhinos in illegal markets and towards living rhinos on protected land.
That is a moment worth taking seriously. Please do not waste it.
Yours sincerely,
Pieter Swart
Chairman, Sustainable Use Coalition Southern Africa (SUCo-SA)