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INTERNATIONAL EDITION | TUESDAY, AUGUST 3, 2021

ONE-MAN BRANDSNOOP DOGG’SLIFE ADVICEPAGE 6 | BUSINESS

CLARA MILLERBALLET DANCERFINDS HER VOICEPAGE 13 | CULTURE

HEART OF CUBAN MIAMIWHERE PASTRIES COMEWITH A SIDE OF POLITICSPAGE 15 | LIVING

On a moonless night in the desert in thefar west of South Africa, Avrill Kafferhad just finished making a sale when ve-hicles with flashing lights emerged outof the darkness and an officer from theStock Theft and Endangered SpeciesUnit leapt from behind a nearby bush,ordering him to the ground.

By the time Mr. Kaffer realized he hadbeen set up, he was already in hand-cuffs. As he looked on, police officersproceeded to open up the eight largecardboard boxes he had brought withhim.

Inside, they found thousands of small,brown, dumpling-like plants — Cono-phytums, native to this part of Africa —evidently only recently dug up.

Conophytum, a genus of floweringplants that consists of over 100 species— including several listed as endan-gered — are the latest victims of a globalwave of succulent poaching driven bysurging demand from collectors and en-thusiasts around the world, but espe-cially in China and Korea, experts said.

South Africa is home to around a thirdof all succulent species, according to theWorld Wildlife Fund, and experts say

that this wave of poaching poses a se-vere threat to biodiversity.

“Conophytums are the big thing now”said Captain Karel Du Toit, the officerbehind the sting operation that led to Mr.Kaffer’s arrest. Capt. Du Toit, himself anavid Conophytum admirer, said he usedto spend most of his time investigatingcases of stolen livestock, but since 2018,fighting succulent poaching had becomea full-time job.

“Eighty percent of those are plant

cases” he said back in his office, pointingto a stack of case files piled on the floorbeside his desk. “The problem is gettinghuge.”

Once thought of in South Africa asplants for the poor, succulents havecome into fashion internationally in re-cent years, valued for their quirky,sculptural forms and the relatively littlemaintenance they require. A search for#succulents now brings up over 12 mil-lion hits on Instagram.

The Covid-19 pandemic has increasedan already buoyant houseplant indus-try, with garden centers reporting asharp rise in indoor plant sales sincelockdowns were first imposed in manycountries in 2020.

The pandemic has also changed theway succulent poachers operate, law en-forcement officials said.

A few years ago, the people Capt. DuToit and his colleagues were arrestingwere almost all foreign nationals — pri-marily Chinese and Korean passportholders. But since the pandemic forcedrestrictions on travel, foreign buyershave been hiring locals to do the poach-ing.

“They supply the local people withGPS readings for spots where the plantsgrow,” Capt. Du Toit said.

This shift has brought the country’sconservation authorities into conflictwith a growing number of young, unem-ployed people who see in these plantsthe chance of an escape from grindingpoverty.

“It’s the most stupid thing I’ve everdone,” said Mr. Kaffer after his arrest,while two officers counted the Conophy-tums he tried to sell, shoveling them intoevidence bags. The first box alone con-tained some 1,424 plants.

Mr. Kaffer had expected to get 160,000rand, about $11,000, for his plants, but PLANTS, PAGE 2

Rangers looking for signs of plant poaching in Knersvlakte Nature Reserve in South Africa. The country’s succulents are prized globally, especially in Asia.

Illegally plucked, and in perilSTEINKOPF, SOUTH AFRICA

PHOTOGRAPHS AND TEXTBY TOMMY TRENCHARD

Tiny plants in South Africa are being poached.Many of the succulents are rare or endangered.

A botanist replanting some of the thou-sands of illegally harvested Conophytumplants that were intercepted in the mail.

A Conophytum ficiforme plant. SouthAfrica is home to dozens of species ofConophytum, the “big thing now.”

Russia’s Olympic team is competingabroad in unmarked uniforms withoutthe country’s flag — not unlike the Rus-sian Army on its unacknowledged mili-tary incursions, as one joke making therounds in Moscow notes.

When a Russian wins a gold medaland takes the top spot on the podium,the country’s national anthem doesn’tplay. Instead, a portion of Tchaikovsky’sPiano Concerto No. 1 celebrates the win-ner.

“Let them listen to classical music,”Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswom-an, Maria Zakharova, said in a video theministry released to cheer on the not-ex-actly-Russian team.

With humor and pride, Russians aregloating over their athletes’ many med-als this summer despite a prohibition onnational symbols at the Tokyo SummerOlympics — a punishment for egregiouspast doping infractions.

“Will this stop our guys?” Tina Kan-delaki, a social media influencer, wroteon Instagram. “No. The Olympics be-come one of those situations when youwant to prove and show to everybodythat you are Russian.”

Indeed, sports fans and sports com-mentators are having no trouble seeingthrough the thin fiction of the odd, bu-reaucratic moniker of their team —R.O.C., the abbreviation for the RussianOlympic Committee.

“Nobody is bothered at all by this situ-ation,” Dmitri Kozika, a bartender atProbka, a sports bar in Moscow, said ofRussian sports fans.

Through the warm twilight of a recentsummer evening in the capital, fans satat leather-upholstered bar stools,sipped beers and kept an eye on replaysfrom Tokyo.RUSSIA, PAGE 10

Russia revels in medals despite its banMOSCOW

Sports fans and officialsscoff at the thin fiction ofa doping-related penalty

BY ANDREW E. KRAMER

Training at a gymnastics academy in Moscow on Sunday. Russian athletes must com-pete in Tokyo as the R.O.C., the abbreviation for the Russian Olympic Committee.

NANNA HEITMANN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

The New York Times publishes opinionfrom a wide range of perspectives inhopes of promoting constructive debateabout consequential questions.

Deaths from Covid-19 were surgingacross Africa in June when 100,000doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccinearrived in Chad. The delivery seemedproof that the United Nations-backedprogram to immunize the world couldget the most desirable vaccines to theleast developed nations. Yet five weekslater, Chad’s health minister said, 94,000doses remained unused.

Nearby in Benin, only 267 shots werebeing given each day, a pace so slow that110,000 of the program’s AstraZenecadoses expired. Across Africa, confiden-tial documents from July indicated, theprogram was monitoring at least ninecountries where it said doses intendedfor the poor were at risk of spoiling thissummer.

The vaccine pileup illustrates one ofthe most serious but largely unrecog-nized problems facing the immunizationprogram as it tries to recover frommonths of missteps and disappoint-ments: difficulty getting doses from air-port tarmacs into people’s arms.

Known as Covax, the program wassupposed to be a global powerhouse, amultibillion-dollar alliance of interna-tional health bodies and nonprofitgroups that would ensure through sheerbuying power that poor countries re-ceived vaccines as quickly as the rich.

Instead, Covax has struggled to ac-quire doses: It stands half a billion shortof its goal. Poor countries are danger-ously unprotected as the Delta variantruns rampant, just the situation that Co-vax was created to prevent.

The need to vaccinate the world goesfar beyond protecting people in poor na-tions. The longer the virus circulates,the more dangerous it can become, evenfor vaccinated people in wealthy coun-tries. Without billions more shots, ex-perts warn, new variants could keepemerging, endangering all nations.

“Covax hasn’t failed, but it is failing,”said Dr. Ayoade Alakija, a co-chair of thevaccine delivery program of the AfricanUnion. “We really have no other options.For the sake of humanity, Covax mustwork.”

More supplies are finally on the way,courtesy of the Biden administration,which is buying 500 million Pfizer dosesand delivering them through Covax, thecenterpiece of a larger pledge bywealthy democracies. The donateddoses should begin shipping this month.

But the Biden donation, worth $3.5billion, comes with a caveat: To helpfund it, the administration is divertinghundreds of millions of dollars promisedfor vaccination drives in poorer coun-tries, according to notes from a meetingbetween Covax and American officials. COVID, PAGE 2

Struggling to delivervaccinesin AfricaCovax, short of doses,strives to reboot its globalfight to tame Covid

BY BENJAMIN MUELLERAND REBECCA ROBBINS

Last week was a week of setbacks forDonald Trump in his attempt to main-tain a firm hold on the RepublicanParty till 2024 and beyond.

In Texas, one of his endorsed candi-dates lost a special election runoff to arival Republican. At about the sametime, Trump came out against thebipartisan infrastructure bill currentlymoving through the Senate, and almostnobody seemed to care: There was nosense that Republican senators fearedhis wrath, no expectation that Trumpsupporters would crowd town halls inprotest.

Among conservatives who wouldprefer not to have the G.O.P. controlled

by Trump for theremainder of hisnatural life, theseindicators weregreeted with someoptimism. “If Trumpendorsements don’tequal victory,” theformer Republicanconsultant TuckerMartin tweeted,“then maybe you canactually be yourself,”without “worrying

about the ego of the host of ‘The Ap-prentice.’ Imagine that world.”

I’m happy to imagine it, but I fearit’s not that simple. The weaknessTrump showed last week is real, but itisn’t new. His power over the G.O.P.has always been limited: As presidenthe often found himself balked on policyby congressional Republicans, and hisimpressive endorsement record re-flects a lot of cautious winner-picking,not aggressive movement-building.

Certainly he has never forged a clearTrumpist faction within the G.O.P. TheRepublicans with the Trumpiest styles,figures like Matt Gaetz or MarjorieTaylor-Greene, have been opportun-ists, not Trump mentees. And theRepublicans trying to create a lastingpopulism, from sitting senators likeJosh Hawley and Tom Cotton to Senatecandidates like J.D. Vance and BlakeMasters, are doing so from outsideTrumpworld, rather than as extensionsof his will.

Limits on his power, however, arenot the same things as limits on hissupport. The rule in the Trump era isthat you can oppose Trump indirectlyor win without his endorsement — but

AssessingTrump’s gripon his party

OPINION

He is weak-er than hewants to be,but strongenough towin theRepublicannominationonce again.

DOUTHAT, PAGE 9

Ross Douthat

Read, watch and listen to the stories. nytimes.com/modernlove

Modern Love

The joys.The tribulations.

The twists. The tribulations.

The twists. The twists.

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