On Tuesday 12th July I was interviewed by Mike Wills on 567 Cape Talk’s ‘John Matham Show’ about my previous blog post, and further dog bite incidents in Philippi’s Sweet Home Farm. This and the next post are a response to some of the feedback and public responses to all of this. This first one looks at the relationship between how situations are understood and described, and its impact on the potential effectiveness of any response and solution.
There is now an established tradition of ham-fisted responses to animal related problems in Cape Town, and this one is shaping up to be one of the most bungled and infuriating of the lot. If we doggedly continue to mischaracterise the problem, and refuse to understand the makeup of the constituency being impacted, any solutions formulated are bound to be little more than an expensive exercise in futility. This set of circumstances is not unique to Cape Town, or South Africa; and neither are the problems we’re seeing.
There is now an established tradition of ham-fisted responses to animal related problems in Cape Town, and this one is shaping up to be one of the most bungled and infuriating of the lot.
Public and official responses to the Sweet Homes incidents
There are two dominant public reactions to what happened in Philippi: blanket condemnation of the Sweet Home community’s enraged targeting of local dogs, and an incessant accusation of negligent pet ownership. Less prominent, but the cornerstone of the Welfare Orgs/NGO/activist agendas, is a renewed call for mass sterilization; and even mandatory sterilization from some quarters.
On the first point: of course it’s deplorable that some residents randomly attacked dogs, and killed a number of them. Whilst the level of emotion is entirely understandable, and the death of a child (or injuries – some grave) is always likely to outrage any community, this kind of mindless vengeance by some Sweet Homes residents is totally unjustifiable. It is a clear violation of the Animal Protection Act, and amounts to little more than craven cruelty. But this problem has been simmering for a long time, and when problems aren’t acted on timeously, irrationality and rage always threaten to displace reasoned judgement.
Attributing the issue to negligent pet ownership misses the point entirely.. as much when it comes from the chattering classes as from politicians, welfare representatives or even leaders of the Sweet Home community. It illustrates how deeply fractured this society still is, inappropriately projects a very subjective value-system and willfully misunderstands how environment and circumstance always shape perceptions and cultural conventions. Lazy assumptions from the media and the Animal Welfare Sector are largely responsible for framing issues like this for the public, including community leaders in the affected areas, and those responsible for repeatedly doing this should think carefully about the potential for long-term damage their sloppy analysis may be doing.
Give a dog a bad name.. or the people who care for them
“In Britain we tend to neatly categorize dogs as either ‘pets’ or ‘stray’ depending on their ownership status. This classification is oversimplified and inappropriate for many urban areas in ‘developing’ countries. Here, there is often a history of ‘street’ animals that are not ‘owned’ by or considered to be the responsibility of any particular individual. Human residents of Jaipur have a wide range of relationships with ‘street dogs – from avoidance due to fear and dislike, through to coexistence and tolerance, to symbiosis. Such attitudes directly affect dog ecology and vary between areas of the city, different streets and even within the same street.”
The situation described in the excerpt above (taken from the Vetlinks UK1 website) may be about Jaipur, India, but it describes perfectly the inappropriateness of stubbornly referring to township dogs as either ‘pets’ or ‘strays’ – with all the normative, middle-class and suburban assumptions these labels communicate. It is reinforcing prejudices across social class, dividing communities from within and may again underpin yet more foolish, unenforceable municipal legislation (e.g. the recent ill-advised and unenforceable animal bylaw in Cape Town which has resulted only in mass non-compliance, widespread alienation and obviously done nothing to prevent this kind of dog-induced tragedy).
Labels and terms of reference frequently define understanding. South Africa’s profile is similar to that found in much of the developing world, one in which the overly simplistic and very European/American dualism of pet/stray as self-evident categories doesn’t make sense. It’s time for a reality check: the dogs that have been making news in Philippi are a population of street dogs, each having a complex set of relationships with the people with whom and around which they live; they are not suburban pets.
So we have a choice: we either use the classification criteria suggested by World Health Organization – developed for rabies control programmes in the developing world – but sometimes criticized for being too human-centred; or we use the template developed by Boitani & Fabbri which is less focused on dogs’ relationships with humans, but better represents the diversity of dog ecology. In my opinion, the second one may be theoretically sounder, but is probably less useful for non-biologists addressing a very human-centered crisis.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines dogs using the following category mix, based on the animal’s level of dependence (i.e. intentional provision of resources) and degree of restriction by man. These are:
(i) Restricted (supervised) dogs – fully dependant and fully restricted
(ii) Family dogs – fully dependent and semi-restricted
(iii) Neighbourhood dogs – semi-dependent and semi-restricted
(iv) Unrestricted (unsupervised ) dogs – semi-dependent and unrestricted
(v) Feral dogs – independent and unrestricted2
Very few dogs in Cape Town are likely to fall into category 5, and many may fall more appropriately into category 4 than being strictly ‘neighbourhood dogs’.
Whilst Boitani & Fabbri’s system3 does use the term ‘stray’ in their expansion on the WHO system, their’s is a broad category that encompasses the full range of neighbourhood/village dog types that roam our streets. But let’s be clear – this isn’t a term describing family-owned pets that have somehow got lost at some point. The clearer demarcation of human investment in the WHO classification system is probably more practical:
- Owned restricted (family dog) – fully dependent and fully restricted.
- Owned unrestricted (family dog) – fully dependent and semi-restricted.
- Stray – includes dogs living in a human-dominated context: heterogeneous group, comprising: (a) dogs that still have a social bond with humans, possibly abandoned or born into human settings; (b) dogs with different degrees of fear/tolerance towards humans, who are attracted near human settings by the availability of food and shelter resources regardless of whether these resources are intentionally provided by humans or are casually associated with them (e.g. handouts, refuse tips or garbage dumps for food, infrastructures for shelter, etc.).
- Feral dogs – have no direct dependency on humans and are entirely unrestricted4
And I’ll repeat what I said in the first post: this is not just a pointless exercise in academic persnicketiness: how we perceive the social dynamics defines our expectations about how those dogs ‘should be living’, and how that community ‘should regard, interact with and care for them’. It is a value-laden framework. Get this right and in future the COGH-SPCA might find themselves less perplexed when Sweet Homes residents are reluctant to produce or hand over dogs, despite the horrible recent history or them purportedly being labeled as “strays” by others in the community.
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The devil’s in the detail, as they say
Since the late 1980’s, South African urbanization has exploded whilst housing, land availability and general service provision hasn’t kept pace. Our cities are now encircled by sprawling slums and shanty towns, with the inevitable consequences. One byproduct of this urban growth has been a rapid increase in the street dog population, with varying levels of attachment, dependency on and investment by the humans they live amongst.
Many of these dogs have some bond with one or more humans in the community, sometimes even well-developed attachments, both emotional and survival-based, and many are also subject to some degree of restriction of movement. Some may have none at all, but are tolerated as long as they aren’t a social menace. But most dogs will gravitate towards some locale, and stay there or there-abouts, usually because some valuable and reliable resource keeps them there.
If authorities are going to intervene in this situation, they should do so with due care and sensitivity. It shouldn’t just be assumed that because they deem a dog not to be owned, or a family pet, that it can simply be dealt with in the most cost-effective and expedient manner available. Even dogs that appear to have very little direct association with any specific individual may have a far more complicated network of affiliations, and actions may impact people with a direct emotional investment that no cursory or short-term observation may reveal.
And even the same people’s attitudes can seem ambivalent and even contradictory from day to day. We have more than enough evidence to suggest that the street dogs in marginalised areas are often seen as an asset, or at least an intrinsic part of the social landscape, even if individuals may become irritated or alienated from them on any particular day. Respect must remain a necessary part of any civic intervention when comes to local dogs.
Education requires prior appreciation of context
Once we are able finally to understand and appreciate the complexity of this issue, we can begin to design interventions that go beyond the crude haranguing of residents about ‘negligent ownership’.
Once we are able finally to understand and appreciate the complexity of this issue, we can begin to design interventions that go beyond the crude haranguing of residents about ‘negligent ownership’.
In Wednesday’s Argus, Mayoral Committee Member for safety and security JP Smith conceded that the mass impounding and destruction of Cape Town’s street dogs (which he claims to be 230 000 strong, no indication of how it was sourced though) was entirely impractical and would cost at least R27 million, which the city can’t afford. The solution, according to Cape of Good Hope SPCA chief executive Alan Perrins, who states that dogs outnumber people in Khayelitsha by 3 to 1 (again no source), lies in a mix of welfare provision, sexual sterilization and community education. And I agree.. well, sort of.
There is little doubt that removing the dogs would be a self-defeating exercise, and would simply open up the environmental niche that has been successfully supporting the current population of dogs thus far. If the niche remains, but the animals are removed, they will quickly be replaced by other dogs from outside the area. More puppies will be born, and more survive, and quickly we’re back to where we started. It’s a matter of Ecology 101. The residents who like dogs, and who have established bonds with those that are currently living there, will also likely just bring in new dogs should the current population be removed.
The use of spay/neuter as a core strategy for population control is complex – far more so than I think any of it’s shriller advocates will ever concede – but I will address that tricky topic in greater detail in my next post. Sterilization is bound to form part of any official response to a problem like this, but I earnestly hope that lessons have been learned from history and that any implementation is an informed one, based on a case-by-case policy rather than any blanket response. And I hope it employs Catch, Neuter, Return (CNR) rather than removing and rehoming animals.
The help poor communities really need
Access to adequate veterinary provision and education are the key to solving the welfare problems. In formulating this, the South African Veterinary Association’s ‘Community Veterinary Clinics’ initiative should probably be given new impetus. Assistance in the provision of food, shelter and other core resources will also ameliorate pressure, especially for the very poorest. And in designing education interventions, I urge the politicians and welfare organizations to utilize whatever expertise is currently available to them, and to call on suitably qualified and experienced Animal Behaviourists in this city for their input and assistance as part of it.
The engagement of available behavioural expertise seems a no-brainer, especially if it can be accompanied by some knowledge of Behavioural Ecology. After all, the neighborhood dog population around the world may account for up to two-thirds of the world’s overall dog population, and you can’t know much about dogs if you don’t understand anything about street dogs.
Finally, the Animal Rehabilitation Initiative is offering whatever assistance we are able to provide.
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Anmlpepl
