But that cannot be a blanket statement, because there are many others who love animals and take excellent care of their pets.
The purpose of this column is to try and re-invent perceptions — or is it myth? — among many township folk with regards to domestic and wild animals.
Sakkie Sekgobela works for the medical school attached to Ga-Rankuwa Hospital outside Pretoria.
It is Sakkie’s nature to walk into a shebeen, mumble greetings, and take his place a distance from other patrons.
But after guzzling his second or third beer, Sakkie shifts his chair nearer to the other patrons and starts relating his stories, especially about the baboons living on the stretch of mountain behind the hospital.
Sakkie says the other day some medical students were having lunch on benches in the outdoors when a baboon leapt onto the table, which lead to the terrified young women bolting in all directions.
On the table the baboon scooped up a mobile phone and climbed its way back onto the nearby koppie.
Amid the confusion, a student suggested someone call the mobile phone, with the objective to scare the baboon into dropping the device. When the phone, which was on vibration mode, tickled the baboon’s palm, the primate, according to Sakkie, mistook the phone for a delicacy, and started chewing the damn thing!
Everybody laughed heartily, and Sakkie took another swig at his beer.
Nearer home in the township in Bela-Bela, folks at my drinking hole chatted about the good old days when their mothers worked in the suburb as kitchen and washing girls.
S’dumo, a taxi owner, said his personal experience was when he spotted his mother coming home for Christmas, carrying all sorts of goodies for the little ones.
One item which attracted the attention of the then schoolboy, S’dumo, was a cage which his mother balanced on her head, which nudged him to jump with joy, thinking “at last” his mom had brought him a pet pigeon.
On closer inspection, the children noticed that the white animal in the cage was a pet mouse, left in the care of S’dumo’s mother, by her employers who were away on holiday to the coast.
S’dumo speaks with nostalgia how in the mornings his mom used to carry the cage and place it under the shade of a tree, even spending time with the cute pet, “talking” and making faces at the mouse.
