Our Northern Cape heritage is being dug up and sold

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

Driven by demand from overseas collectors and an aesthetic trend known as "plant parenting", rare South African succulents are being harvested at such a scale that some species — like Clivia mirabilis, Conophytum and others — are now classified as critically endangered. Between 2019 and 2024, more than 1.6 million illegally harvested succulents were seized by South African authorities. Most never survive long enough to be returned to the wild.

While we’re braaing and waving flags this Heritage Day, our country’s natural legacy is being dismantled in real time. And unlike stolen artefacts, these plants can’t just be returned to a museum. Once they’re gone, they’re gone.

Whose heritage are we protecting?

Heritage Month is meant to honour the diverse histories, cultures, and traditions that shape our identity. But too often, we narrowly define heritage as monuments, language, or music. Our natural world — the biomes, species, and landscapes that sustain us — is treated as separate, even expendable.

That disconnect has opened the door to what we now see unfolding across the Northern Cape: organised networks trafficking succulents the way others smuggle drugs or ivory.

Some of these networks are deeply embedded. They have logistics, buyers, supply chains. Local poachers are sometimes recruited by foreign syndicates with promises of fast cash. Others are simply desperate. With high unemployment and few opportunities, it’s easy to see how someone might trade a bag of living stones for rent money.

But the damage is profound. Succulent habitats take centuries to regenerate. The plants themselves grow painfully slowly — often just a few millimetres a year. And they’re not just pretty decorations. They’re part of complex ecosystems, providing food and shelter for insects, reptiles, birds and small mammals that rely on them. When they’re stripped from the soil, entire food webs collapse.

So who are we protecting when we say “heritage”? The truth is, we can’t claim to honour our past or our identity if we’re not also safeguarding the land beneath our feet.

Law enforcement can’t do it alone

There have been some wins. In April, four men were sentenced to 15 years in prison each for harvesting Clivia mirabilis from a protected area near Nieuwoudtville — one of the toughest penalties yet for environmental crimes. Units like the Springbok-based Stock Theft and Endangered Species Unit have led successful stings, and partnerships with SANBI (South African National Biodiversity Institute) and conservation NGOs have resulted in better plant identification, prosecutions, and even the use of specially trained detection dogs.

But the problem is outpacing the solution.

With only 8% of the Succulent Karoo under formal protection, vast tracts of land remain vulnerable. Many confiscated plants are so badly damaged or diseased that they can’t be saved. Greenhouses across the country are overflowing. Rangers are stretched thin. Conservationists are burning out.

What’s needed now is more than arrests. It’s a provincial and national reckoning with how we value — and undervalue — our natural heritage. That includes supporting legal, community-based cultivation of succulents. It means fixing our broken permit systems so that rural people can benefit from biodiversity without breaking the law. And it means educating consumers — especially those overseas — about the real cost of that Instagram-perfect pot plant.

Today, let’s celebrate with eyes open

Heritage Day is not just a celebration — it’s a choice. A chance to say what kind of future we want, and what parts of our past we refuse to lose.

So as you gather with friends and family today, take a moment to think about the wild beauty that exists only here, in our corner of the world. The tiny plants hiding between rocks. The ancient species holding on in the dust. The irreplaceable lifeforms that are as much a part of our heritage as any anthem or flag.

Because if we don’t protect them now, they won’t be here next Heritage Day.