Of all the things worth stealing in South Africa, I would not have thought succulents would feature on the list. Then I read Sally Andrew’s Wild Things Never Die. The South African novelist’s latest book introduced me to a black-market trade I had no idea existed, and has left me with questions rather more troubling than the identity of the murderer.

There is, apparently, a thriving international market for South Africa’s flora. Collectors in Asia, Europe, Britain, and the United States are clamouring for our plants, particularly succulents whose fleshy leaves or stems store water, allowing them to survive in dry conditions. The problem is that some of the most sought-after species grow wild only in tiny pockets of South Africa’s Succulent Karoo, sometimes confined to a single hill or patch of quartz-covered ground.

A few small plants, one might think. Many of us have walked past them without a second glance. What is the big deal?

It is, in fact, a profoundly serious problem. In the first six months of 2026 alone, authorities seized nearly 376 000 illegally harvested plants in just 26 incidents. According to CapeNature, about 2.5 million succulents had been confiscated in the Western Cape since 2018. It estimated that intercepted plants probably accounted for less than a quarter of those poached.

The full value of the illegal trade is difficult to establish. In one case described by the Financial Intelligence Centre, a person was found in possession of more than 23 000 Conophytum plants (tiny pebble-like succulents) with an estimated street value of R4.6 million. For plants!

Those are not insignificant numbers for a crime I knew nothing about.

Pillaging

We are all familiar by now with the stories of the rape and pillage of South Africa’s resources. From the illegal extraction of gold to the poaching of rhinos and the theft of copper cables and railway infrastructure, we understand why criminals pursue them and the scale of the problem. Yet, while we continue to condemn what these criminals do, we seem to have become desensitised to the horror inflicted on the country and its people by this black-market activity.

Discovering this “new” black market trade has revived my sense of outrage. Perhaps I am naïve to be so surprised. There seems to be little in South Africa that somebody has not found a way to strip, steal, or sell. From minerals to wildlife, infrastructure, and industrial assets, this country is being diminished in ways both conspicuous and quietly ruinous.

Discovering that small plants have joined the inventory actually makes the picture more complete than absurd.

What angers me is the familiar imbalance between the reward and the loss. Somebody makes money from taking something, often leaving destruction and hardship behind. Those who live here are left with less as a result.

In the case of succulents, their theft means considerably more than a few empty holes in the ground. The Succulent Karoo supports more than 6 000 plant species, about 40% of which occur nowhere else on Earth. Some targeted populations are confined to such small areas that one poaching incident can remove them entirely.

Attraction

The attraction for a collector and the danger to the plant are uncomfortably close: rarity helps make it desirable, while leaving little margin for its removal. As with rhinos, the poaching of succulents means that species are flirting with extinction.

This is not an argument that everything growing in South Africa must remain untouched. There is a legal trade in cultivated plants, which does benefit local communities. The distinction is between that trade and the stripping of wild populations. But neither should we mistake a willingness to pay for a right to possess. A buyer’s pleasure in acquiring something unusual does not cancel the loss at its source.

It is unsettling that I needed to read a novel to bring this to my attention. That is not a criticism of the journalists and conservationists who have been documenting the trade. They have done the work. Nor have the authorities been doing nothing. Conservation agencies, researchers, and enforcement officials have developed a national response.

The difficulty is translating that response into protection across enormous areas with limited resources. It is an all too familiar problem in South Africa right now.

The relatively low profile of succulent poaching does speak volumes about the variety of crimes that are competing for our attention. South Africans have enough urgent problems without being instructed to rank succulent theft above violent crime, unemployment, or failing infrastructure. We need not do so. Recognising one loss does not diminish another.

But the fact that we have so much else to worry about cannot become a standing excuse for accepting the next loss. These plants do not have to be worth millions on the black market to deserve protection. They are part of the country we live in. We should not have to discover their value only when somebody has found a way to steal them.

Jade Davenport is a historian and writer whose work explores mining, history, business, and society. She is the author of Digging Deep: A History of Mining in South Africa, now in its second edition. She lives between London and Johannesburg.