Cigarettes for Rare Flowers: South Africa Becomes a Biopiracy Hotspot

Amid the crush of tourists, Fatson Kombo, a security guard at the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in the Western Cape, South Africa, found the demeanour of a Saudi tourist unsettling.

The tourist moved away from the other tourists, glanced sideways, plucked some indigenous flowers, and stashed them in his backpack.  “I confronted him. He didn’t expect me,” says Kombo, recalling the incident that happened in 2022. 

Posing as tourists, the offender and two accomplices stole 1.63 million floral items over three weeks. They were later fined $108,000 (R1.8 million).

“Unfortunately, this Saudi national is just one of several offenders operating under the radar,” Nomfundo Tshabalala, Director-General of South Africa’s Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment, tells The Xylom. “There are both foreign and local offenders. They harvest rare plants and try to smuggle them abroad. It’s a crime that spans borders,” she says. While some of these plants have medicinal value, most are stolen for ornamental purposes.

While South Africa’s biodiversity-rich botanical gardens attract many visitors, they are also becoming hotbeds of biopiracy (Courtesy of the South African National Biodiversity Institute)

A Biopiracy Target

After COVID-19, South Africa has been trying to change its visa policies to attract more visitors. Specifically for China and India, South Africa initiated the first phase of the Trusted Tour Operator Scheme in February 2024 — with the launch officially carried out in April 2025 — and the second phase in August 2025. The scheme empowers vetted tour operators in both countries to submit visa applications online, doing away with manual, paper-based work and enabling visas to be processed within 24 hours. The results have been encouraging, with nearly 42,000 Chinese tourists arriving in 2024, compared to 12,219 in 2022. 

“As Eastern arrivals shoot up, the country has inadvertently become a holy grail for traffickers who come to smuggle [plants] to lucrative Gulf and Asian markets,” Lieutenant-General Siphesihle Nkosi, the head of the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, South African police service’s specialised unit, tells The Xylom. 

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Transnational organised crime gangs recruit local enablers to target rare plants and flower samples. “The attempted biopiracy by that Saudi criminal is just the tip of the iceberg. Biodiversity theft is a crisis now,” she adds. 

South Africa is one of the most biodiverse countries on earth, home to more than 20,000 plant species — accounting for nearly 10% of the planet’s total. The country has native plants with medicinal properties, such as the Barberton cycad, whose leaves are used in traditional Chinese medicine; species of restios with anti-wrinkle properties; and fynbos plants used as antiseptics and in erosion control. The red disa, a red orchid that grows in the Cape region, is revered for its religious significance.

Of the 9,000 plant species in the Cape Floristic Region, 6,200 are endemic. 

The Modus Operandi

There is a direct link between South Africa’s extreme poverty and biopiracy, according to the police and reforestry practitioners in South Africa.

Sean DTX Peitersen, a paroled and reformed gang member from Cape Town, says that the biodiversity traffickers hire locals for meagre money, taking advantage of poverty, unemployment, and extreme hunger. Peitersen has been working with the police and ecology researchers to provide insights into how biopiracy crime networks in South Africa operate.

He recalls Chinese syndicates using street drugs to lure local gangs into illegally harvesting coveted sea abalone. 

“There is no distinction between which local gangs work with dodgy tourists to smuggle rare fish and which ones poach rare flowers,” observes Pietersen. Sometimes, these traffickers pay as little as a 20-kilogram box of cigarettes to smuggle plant species from botanical gardens, he adds. 

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Rare plants smuggled from South Africa are in high demand on Chinese online marketplaces, as per a report by Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, a global network working towards solving organised crimes. According to the report, Chinese social media platforms openly feature images of the Oorlogskloof reserve, including satellite imagery and photographs of poachers at work.

Legacy crimes such as poaching rare fish species and moving drug contraband have become harder as policing is more intense, Pieterson says. Traffickers are aware that the law enforcement officers and locals have little to no knowledge about the niche crime. “Rare plants are easier to smuggle because, frankly speaking, very few police or border officers know whether a rose-petalled flower is endangered and illegal to export,” he adds. 

Large-scale traffickers pay off compromised police officers and border officials at South Africa’s airports to move consignments. Police chief Nkosi reveals that they have arrested 10 of their members and 20 customs officials at airports in the last two years for conniving with tourists who smuggle seeds or saplings of rare plants. 

The hills of Cape Town are rich in floral diversity (Courtesy of the South African National Biodiversity Institute)

Laws against biodiversity theft are largely absent across Africa. Where they exist, they are poorly understood or enforced. 

In 2013, South Africa ratified the Nagoya Protocol under the Convention on Biological Diversity, providing an international legal basis that is reflected in national law through the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act, 2004. Under the act, unauthorised access, export, or commercial use of indigenous biological resources is a criminal offence, with mandatory permits and benefit-sharing requirements aimed at preventing biopiracy. 

“But enforcement is difficult because money competes with more pressing needs such as treating HIV, recovering from climate disasters, or ending conflicts,” says Shamiso Mupara, an activist and forestry expert. 

In Mozambique, possessing rare animals such as pangolins can put you in jail, but harvesting rare plants attracts no penalty. 

“A large majority of the offenders tells us that there is a thriving market in Dubai and China where rare flower seeds or saplings that are illegally acquired for as little as $20 in South Africa can sell for up to seven times that price to private collectors, museums, or labs,” Nkosi adds.

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This poses an irreversible threat to the country’s biodiversity. The South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) — a semi-governmental entity working on biodiversity — warns that nearly half of South Africa’s 986 assessed ecosystem types face ecological collapse, and that 5% of plant species are highly threatened and under-protected. 

Can Technology Provide a Solution?

Overpolicing Arab and Asian tourists could backfire, as their spending supports 418,000 biodiversity-related jobs and tourism tax revenue, say experts in the tourism industry. “There is a catch-22 situation,” says Adnani Gert, the chief biologics manager in the Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment. 

“Allowing this gross theft of our biodiversity will make the country barren, no longer attractive to tourists. Our plant-based industries will wilt if insect species cannot cross-pollinate rare plants,” he tells The Xylom.

There is no central database on the number of biopiracy thefts or arrests in South Africa and the conviction rate, says Athelenta Mathe, the police spokesperson. Because, compared to other violent crimes, this is not given priority, with police deferring matters to private wildlife parks and their security guards. 

Training staff to identify rare and endemic plant species helps curb biopiracy. (Courtesy of the South African National Biodiversity Institute)

However, the laws are being strengthened for those caught illegally harvesting rare plants, she says, citing the recent 15-year jail sentence given to four foreign nationals who had poached 303 specimens of the vulnerable Clivia mirabilis in the Namakwa region of western South Africa. 

“Yes, tourism is important for South Africa, but there should be a way to end biopiracy,” says Adnani Gert. “Technology and collaboration between the police and plant science experts is key.” 

“For instance, when police at border crossings, ports, or airports encounter suspicious plants on the move, they should be able to quickly upload their picture to a real-time, AI-based database to alert plant laboratory managers. They can confirm whether the plant is a mere coffee tree sapling or a vulnerable Clivia mirabilis plant,” Gert suggests. 

In no time, he says, the suspect can be detained, the plants isolated, and legal proceedings started with the evidence secured via a real-time database network. “We have to double down on the tech of tracing, verifying, and prosecution.” 

He cites the example of Natural Resources Canada, which has a repository of rare plants that is helping immigration authorities and researchers. Though South Africa has no firm plans to initiate such a system, Canada’s model is worthy of a study, he says. 

“Any border police, researcher, or tourism operator can quickly scan the Canadian database and determine which plant is on the red list. It empowers the immigration officers to investigate further, quicker when presented with images of plant specimens,” he says. 

Until such a technological solution is implemented in South Africa, the system will have to count on vigilant security personnel like Kombo.

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