South Africa has signed an anti-poaching agreement with neighbouring Mozambique, a major transit route for rhino horn trafficked to Asia.
Mozambique is a prime source of illegal hunters hired and armed by transnational crime syndicates to cross the border into South Africa to kill the huge, prehistoric beasts.
South Africa's Kruger National Park shares a long border with Mozambique and has borne the brunt of rhino poaching in recent years.
So far this year a total 293 rhino have been killed in South Africa, with nearly half of the attacks in the Kruger Park, despite the deployment of troops to protect them.
The agreement "entails us working together with Mozambique to eradicate rhino poaching... so that Mozambique is not used as a transit country", Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa told AFP.
The two countries agreed to share intelligence and jointly develop anti-poaching technology and education programs.
Rhino horns are prized as a status symbol in Asia and mistakenly thought to possess medicinal properties to cure cancers and hangovers, even though they are composed of the same material as fingernails.
The poachers kill the rhinos with semi-automatic rifles, hack off the horns for shipment to Asia and cross back into Mozambique, leaving the bodies to rot.
Mozambique early this month approved a law that will impose heavy penalties of up to 12 years on anybody convicted of rhino poaching.
"Previous laws did not penalise poaching, but we think this law will discourage Mozambicans who are involved in poaching," Mozambique's Tourism Minister Carvalho Muaria said.
At least 46 Mozambicans, five of them policemen, have been arrested inside their native country this year alone for poaching.
