Photo: International Rhino Foundation South Africa is considering whether to approach the international community with a proposal to trade in rhino horn, Environment Minister Edna Molewa told MPs on Wednesday.
Opening debate in the National Assembly on her department's budget, she said this included engaging "major role players, including international and regional partners [and] potential consumer states".
Molewa's remarks come 10 months ahead of the 16th congress of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), set to take place in Bangkok, Thailand, in March next year.
According to reports, South Africa is sitting on an estimated 20-ton stockpile of rhino horn; some of it in private hands, some stored by conservation authorities.
The price of the horn, should the Cites moratorium on trade be lifted, has been estimated at more than R500,000 a kilogram.
Molewa has declined to say how much rhino horn is held by government-managed parks and reserves.
"Due to security risks, the department cannot publicly announce the amount of stocks being held by these agencies," she said earlier this year.
On Wednesday, she said her department was involved in an "extensive" preparatory process ahead of the Cites congress.
"This will include discussions on whether or not to approach the international community with a proposal to trade in rhino horn."
On the rhino poaching crisis in South Africa, Molewa said 199 rhino had been killed so far this year.
"We are very, very deeply concerned," she told the House.
Earlier, briefing journalists at Parliament, Molewa said South Africa would not table a document at the next Cites meeting calling for the rhino horn trade moratorium to be lifted.
"No, not this time around. We are still considering all options, as well as probabilities towards that direction. We have not decided yet. Let it be clear.
"We are still doing some very serious work in analysing whether we need to move in that direction or not."
Among the things that needed to be done before trade could be resumed was "to ensure we get to know who the partners are on the other side".
Policies had to be in place "that do not allow any shenanigans to operate in the system," Molewa said.
"There are just too many things to do before we can place the discussion before the conference of parties. We are not yet there."
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The country of South Africa has already done enough damage to Africa's dwindling elephant population by getting CITES to allow its last "one off" sale of ivory to China and Japan. Now they want to do the same to the rhino -- Please S.A., save your elephants and rhinos, rather than selling their remains after they are killed.