Suddenly they found themselves in a life-and-death situation on foreign soil. From all quarters a murderous mob was converging on them, and were it not for quick forward thinking, 25-year-old Sean van Niekerk from Louis Trichardt and his mates would not have lived to tell their tale.
Sean’s recounting of their ordeal sounds more like part of the script of the 2001 Hollywood blockbuster Black Hawk Down. The film is based on the battle of Mogadishu in Somalia on 3 and 4 October 1993. After a failed mission by a joint American Special Forces operation to capture self-proclaimed president-to-be Mohamed Farrah Aidid, members of Task Force Ranger's team got caught behind enemy lines. The initial operation was planned to take an hour, but became an overnight standoff and rescue operation that left 18 American soldiers dead and 73 wounded. Closer to home, it might as well have been a page out of the book The Wynand du Toit Story. Du Toit, a former South African Special Forces operator, was also captured behind enemy lines by FAPLA soldiers in Angola in May 1985. He and two fellow South African Special Forces operators were deployed into Angola as part of Operation Cabinda. The mission also failed, with only Du Toit surviving.
Although Sean and his mates are not soldiers, they are waging a war - the war against poaching. He forms part of an elite anti-poaching team funded by the International Anti-Poaching Foundation. They operate in a protective corridor between South-Africa and Mozambique, known as the Greater Lebombo Conservancy. Sean and his team are in charge of two sections of this corridor on the Mozambique side, a 40km-long piece of conservancy known as the Sabie Game Park that stretches from approximately the Sabie River to the Massintonto River, as well as another 8 000ha piece of the corridor nearer to the Massingir Dam.
There is no doubt that Sean and his team are effective. “A year ago, between 17 and 18 groups of poachers were coming into the area. The last four months, we’ve zeroed it. Kruger [Kruger National Park] told us that there has been a 90% decrease in poaching in the two areas we are operating in,” said Sean during an interview with the Zoutpansberger on Monday.
It was business as usual on 1 October for Sean and his team in their endless fight against poachers. Since the unit is so effective in the area, the poachers have started looking at other ways to enter both the conservancy and the KNP. This entails entering through less-controlled pieces of land bordering the areas in which Sean operates.
At around noon, Sean’s team, operating just south of the Corruman Dam, radioed him that they had made contact with a group of three poachers and subsequently managed to arrest one man, while seizing the poacher’s bakkie, two buffalo carcasses and a rifle. At that stage, Sean was in the town of Corruman. “This is a very bad township, known for its hostility towards the anti-poaching unit. A lot of the headmen were poachers themselves,” said Sean.
