Vandals target steel rhinos
Sculptures in Gonubie are badly defaced
TWO life-sized rhino sculptures intended to decry the slaughter of rhinos in South Africa are themselves fighting for survival.
Renny Schwedhelm and his wife Sandy, Gonubie wildlife lovers, who financed the creation of a metal mother-andcalf rhino tableaux, fear there will be an attempt to “dehorn” the enormous works made from recycled drums, which they placed on a pole on their property in full view of busy Gonubie Main Road traffic. Schwedhelm mounted the sculptures 4.5m in the air, to make it harder for hooligans to deface, bend, hack or steal the public sculptures.
But already, the metal horn of the 110kg mother rhino has been blatted by paintball gunmen using it for target practice. Statistics released on Wednesday by government revealed that 618 rhinos were poached since January, but there were 191 arrests.
Grahamstown poet Harry Owen, who in May published an anthology of international poetic outrage against rhino poaching, titled For Rhino in a Shrinking World, railed against the vandals and warned off potential thieves.
“It shows what kind of idiocy we are dealing with here. They will get as much use out of the metal as you get out of the real thing (horn) which is nothing at all,” he said.
“The notion that such an important aspect of life, something so iconic to South Africa and which could soon be gone, should become something for people to mock, is the most miserable thing.”
The Schwedhelms said they spotted a number of life-sized metal wildlife sculptures while on holiday in Kruger Park last month and tracked down crafters and brothers, Hudson and Nesbit Mabwe, to their roadside workshop. The couple bussed the Mabwes to Gonubie, and paid them thousands to craft, among others, the two rhinos. Hudson Mabwe said the Gonubie gig helped them support their family of seven, and seeing the ocean for the first time was thrilling. “I want to come back and make an elephant,” he said. The brothers have developed their own metal guillotine to cut scrap into small pieces which are painstakingly welded onto wire frames. — mikel@dispatch.co.za