It is a tale told many times — to South Africans’ irritation — but one worth repeating this week. Every once in a while when we engage with some ignorant people from other continents, they say: “Oh my Gawd, you’re from Africa (as if it’s one country)? I know someone from a village near Victoria Falls, you might know them (then they give you a random name).”
Then they deliver the killer line: “How is it like living in Africa, with wild animals roaming freely?” This happened to me in London on a Reuters Foundation fellowship years ago, when someone from Eastern Europe thought they were being empathetic. And I have since heard related tales. The liberated ones though know that the Kruger National Park is, in fact, a park. But there’s always that one eager but irritatingly ignorant person to endure.
This encounter came to mind this week as Gauteng residents were horrified to read tales on how a tiger on the run almost forced all walkers from Walkerville indoors. I must say I like Panyaza Lesufi, our Gauteng premier, for the responsive politician he is. Gauteng, with its myriad challenges, requires such an energetic spirit. But as Sheba, the tigress ran amok this week, our responsive premier was nowhere to be seen.
Not that he was required to chase after the wild animal (or that it would run from him), but the expectation, certainly from petrified residents, was for Lesufi to say how he was going to ensure we don’t have to endure this nonsense. How is it that the country’s economic hub is reduced to some form of NatGeoWild on Lesufi’s watch and he remains tight-lipped?
As an education MEC, Lesufi wasn’t one to wait for schoolchildren to physically injure each other to the extent they got hospitalised before reacting. But Walkerville resident William Mokoena, 39, relived, in hospital, the horror of coming face to face with a tiger. It came straight for his throat, he told us. His leg hardly moving, his concern was that children frequently use the pathway he was on when the tiger attacked him. He is lucky to be alive. He will be lucky, it seems, to hear from the premier any time soon.
“I can only thank God. Never in my life would I think something like this would happen to me,” said Mokoena. Of course. Poor guy! Traumatised. It’s also easy to understand why. If you stay in a village bordering the Kruger National Park, you’d expect to run into a wild animal from time to time.
Not in Joburg.
Unfortunately, there are no permits required to keep such a dangerous exotic animal in a residential area in Gauteng. This is an issue (we) vehemently oppose, for obvious reasons.
— Keshvi Nair, spokesperson for National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
You can’t go jog because, like Mokoena, something might go straight for your throat? What’s terrible is that some people are forced to be on the roads, tigers notwithstanding — or lose their jobs. They may hear tales of a tiger jumping fences and, literally, stealing a dog to snack on. Joseph Phiri, whose dog was eaten by the tiger, lives less than a kilomet from where Sheba escaped. He spotted it three times within 72 hours of its escape. He and others in the area still had to walk the streets, just as those ignorant Europeans and Americans thought. Who must live like this? And our premier is uncharacteristically silent.
The question on many people’s lips for days was: why is it that such dangerous animals are kept in private residences? It’s just wrong.
Keshvi Nair, spokesperson for National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, told TimesLIVE Premium this week: “Unfortunately, there are no permits required to keep such a dangerous exotic animal in a residential area in Gauteng. This is an issue (we) vehemently oppose, for obvious reasons.”
Gauteng, the commercial centre of Southern Africa, has no regulations required to keep exotic but dangerous animals. The other rogues are Mpumalanga, Limpopo and North West. Should we, like Nair, spell out the obvious? We need regulations. How many like Mokoena should have dangerous creatures coming for their necks before some regulations or laws are enacted?
Sheba, if there was any doubt, made the reasons even more obvious. Not for Lesufi. In the absence of regulations, we all rely on the owner to let everyone know there is a dangerous animal on the loose. To obviate negative consequences, it’s possible for an owner to simply keep quiet — join the search and witness it euthanised eventually.
A self-respecting commercial capital would come up with provincial regulations to ensure order.
Lesufi, of course, is a few months into his office but has been a member of the executive for years. If he’s unhappy with Gauteng as some sort of a zoo, he would have said so this week. If he didn’t want any more dogs eaten or others like Mokoena becoming traumatised, he would have commiserated with us. But alas, he’s suddenly reticent. And the rest of us are somewhere between Victoria Falls and the southern tip of the African jungle, where wild animals roam freely.
Zola Majavu, Mokoena’s lawyer, told us he has to “investigate, give advice, get a medical report which shows the extent of his injuries and (get) a report into an inspection of the property where the tigers were being held”. This is what regulations could have sorted before there were any injuries. We are lucky no human life was lost. We may not be this lucky the next time.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.