With tigers coming out to play in parking lots in Gauteng’s suburbs and quenching their thirst in waterholes on agricultural plots, it is only a matter of time before other wild and exotic animals explore the boundaries beyond backyards or trusses of thatched roofs in other areas of the country.
I beg that before people jump to conclusions about wild and exotic animals spotted in other people’s yards or seen entering or exiting neighbours’ properties; they do the responsible, right and legal thing – that is call the police. As we have seen over the past few weeks, some people have wild animals as pets.
In 2015, at Ramaphosa settlement in Ekurhuleni a mob of about 500 people attacked a vervet monkey, which they believed to have been used in witchcraft. The monkey was so badly injured, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) put it out of its misery.
“Due to the severe injuries the monkey sustained and due to time constraints, the only resort that could be taken was for a sharpshooter to humanely end the suffering of the animal”, SPCA’s Boksburg manager Wilma Steynbergh said at the time.
Imagine what would have happened to the people who were believed to be the “owners” or “using” the monkeys for witchcraft?
We know there are many cases in which people died a cruel death at the hands of angry mobs who suspected them of practising witchcraft – and many happen to be women, especially elderly women in townships and rural parts of the country.
Another vervet monkey was burnt to death in Kagiso on the West Rand by community members who associated it with witchcraft and even believed it to be able to talk.
I implore those whose vision and hearing is a little impaired from a night of overindulgence in intoxicating and mind-altering substances to think twice before speaking of small creatures spotted in someone’s yard or other wild animals that have been spotted in someone’s house.
While black cats make great companions to the young and old in other areas of our complex society; an elderly woman who loves cats and happens to have a black cat in the hood and rural areas is looked at with great suspicion.
Only in suburbia will a woman with snakes coiled around her neck in a car marked “snakes in transit” be able to go about her business with no one linking her and her companions to witchcraft and other such things.
Women in townships and rural areas have died just on the basis of unproven accusations.
Please do call the police if you spot an exotic or wild animal in your hood or village instead of jumping to conclusions. It is the right thing to do.
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