South Africa: The brutal fight against rhino poachers

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Anti-poaching unit on a South African rhino farm: playground for racists

Photo: Brent Stirton / Getty Images

A year before the case is brought to the United Nations, Megan Carr gets on a plane at Cape Town Airport and slides into her seat.

A book is on her lap, but she's too nervous to read it.

Carr flies to the east coast of South Africa to track down a series of murders that may well extend into the country's apartheid past.

In Durban, she rents a car and drives north.

It is the middle of January last year.

Megan Carr is a small blonde woman with a determined gait, in jeans and a black top.

During the journey, she tells of the threats she received as a result of her research.

She should be intimidated, she says.

To this day she is afraid of men who, she says, are keen to kill her.

The reason for their trip is a substance whose sale and trade are illegal, but which has been in great demand for years: the horn of rhinos.

In the meantime, the number of poached rhinos in South Africa has increased dramatically: from 13 animals killed in 2007 to 1215 in 2014, the sad high point so far.

Since then, the number has stagnated at a high level.

The country declared war on poachers, a "Rhino War" broke out, a war supposedly to save the rhinos.

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