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'Crocodile Dundee' behind bars
23/11/2006 14:14 - (SA)
Thabisile Khoza
Malelane - Mpumalanga's self-styled Crocodile Dundee is behind bars after failing to raise R1 000 bail.
Tonga villager Alex Masinga was arrested and charged with poaching after his claims of an epic four-hour battle with a "vicious" crocodile was exposed as a lie.
Masinga enjoyed a brief period of hero worship in his rural community after telling astonished neighbours that he fought off the three metre reptile after it attacked him on October 22.
Masinga posed for photographs with the crocodile, claiming that it ambushed him by biting his leg when he took a break from farming to fetch water from the Mlumati River.
He said that he first wrestled with the predator, before grabbing his panga and shoving it down the crocodile's throat.
Wildlife authorities smelled a rat, however, after failing to find the panga or any of the injuries Masinga claimed to have inflicted on the reptile. Instead, a fishing net was found entangled around the crocodile's head.
Masinga and a friend, Robert Khoza, were arrested shortly afterwards and charged with poaching.
The two appeared briefly in the Tonga magistrates court on Wednesday and were remanded into police custody when they were unable to pay R1 000 bail each. They will appear on December 11 again.
Police dockets tabled in court say that the crocodile, which is a protected animal, was pregnant with it was killed. Wildlife experts retrieved 37 eggs from it during the post mortem.
The docket claims that the fishing net and various other evidence indicates that Khoza and Masinga were deliberately hunting crocodiles. Their skin and meat are prized on the muti black-market.
- African Eye
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