It took less than an hour from the time a stranger asked for food for him to be identified as one of the seven men who escaped from Waainek Correctional Facility in Makhanda and rearrested. Trymore Chauke was arrested at Seven Fountains around 7pm on Sunday 23 October.
Chauke is one of six rhino poachers convicted in the Makhanda High Court last month, due to be sentenced on 4 November. He escaped in the early hours of Tuesday 18 October together with four other members of the Chitiyo rhino-poaching gang as well as Bennet Kwarrie, detained for housebreaking and theft and attempted murder and Luvuyo September, detained for charges of murder, attempted murder, kidnapping and robbery.
Those now arrested are Trymore Chauke, Simba Masinge (both convicted rhino poachers) and Kwarrie. Still at large are Francis Chitiyo, Nhamo Muyambo, and Abraham Moyane (from the Chitiyo gang and all Zimbabwean citizens) and September, who is South African.
An accident in the Free State landed Kwarrie in hospital and back in custody hours after the breakout Masinge was arrested in bush east of Joza, Makhanda, close to the N2, last Wednesday night.
South African Police Service spokesperson Warrant Officer Majola Nkohli said on Sunday evening (23 october 2022) the team that is tracking and tracing the escapees received information about a person who had been asking for food from people in Seven Fountains.
“A task team immediately followed up on the leads and within 30 minutes they rearrested [Chauke].”
The Chitiyo gang was arrested on the N2 near Makhanda in July 2018 and, together with Misheck Chauke, who was not named as one of the escapees, had been in custody ever since.
The 30 September judgment was precedent-setting in that it was the first case from arrest to conviction for conspiracy to poach rhinos, and the first case in the Eastern Cape to test evidence without there being a dead rhino or a rhino horn.
Police have urged community embers to continue to alert them to any suspicious or unknown people in their neighbourhoods so the escapees can all be rearrested and returned to custody.
