Our heritage is being dug up and sold off

JUST days before South Africans gathered to celebrate Heritage Day this week, two men were arrested on a dusty roadside in the Northern Cape with a bakkie full of endangered plants.

- MORGAN MORGAN

At 3.20am on Monday, police on night patrol spotted a white Toyota Hilux along the R382 near Port Nolloth. Beneath the canopy was a haul of illegal flora, carefully stashed and destined for the black market.

The men, foreign nationals aged 36 and 42, were arrested on the scene. The value of the confiscated plants hasn't been confirmed, but in this trade, the numbers are often staggering. A single plant can fetch thousands of rand overseas. In recent cases, busts have netted street values as high as R30 million.

The real tragedy, however, isn't the monetary cost. It's the cultural and ecological one. Because what these men were trying to steal wasn't just plants. It was part of the Northern Cape and South Africa's living heritage - and they were treating it like loot.

WHEN HERITAGE MEANS PROFIT

South Africa's Succulent Karoo, which stretches across the Northern and Western Cape, is the most biodiverse arid region on the planet. It is home to more than 6,000 species of plants, over 40% of which are found nowhere else. These plants have survived for centuries in one of the world's harshest environments, evolving into strange, beautiful, often tiny lifeforms - some shaped like pebbles, others like thumb tips or miniature stars.

And now they're vanishing.