Probing pit bulls’ DNA

As the call to ban pit bulls as pets in South Africa grows ever louder, government says it will be using the DNA of pit bulls to probe their aggressive behaviour.

The latest death is of a five-year-old preschooler, Zibele Mthi, who succumbed to his injuries in hospital two days after two pit bull terriers attacked him in a street in Dyamala village outside Alice in the Eastern Cape on Good Friday.

Zibele was running from his grandmother’s house to his mother’s home to take a bath ahead of the Good Friday church service when the dogs attacked him. He suffered very serious injuries and was rushed to hospital where he succumbed to his injuries two days later.

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The Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development on Tuesday said comprehensive DNA analysis of pit bull and pit bull-type dogs will be conducted.

“The department hopes this will assist to identify what has caused these dog breeds to become problematic, mauling and killing numerous people across the country, with these attacks becoming more prevalent in recent years.”

The department said the exercise would also investigate aggressive behaviour and assist in identifying the pit bull and pit bull-type dogs that may develop these traits through indiscriminate crossbreeding.

This comes after the Sizwe Kupelo Foundation handed over a petition with over 139 000 signatures, calling for the banning of pit bulls as domestic pets to minister of Agriculture, Thoko Didiza.

Didiza said the department recently had a meeting with the Sizwe Kupelo Foundation, where the foundation raised concerns about the loss of lives caused by pit bull attacks. The minister said the department shares the same concerns.

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“We didn’t just sit as government. We have looked at the regulations and have engaged with the minister of justice, under whom the Animal Management Act resides, to look at how that legislation can be strengthened to protect the citizens.”

She said they have also roped in municipalities, as they are the ones who develop by-laws pertaining to the care and management of domestic animals, including dogs.

Didiza said they have also engaged with the Association of Pit Bulls in SA.

“We are sympathetic to the call that is being made by the Sizwe Kupelo Foundation but we are also listening to other stakeholders who have approached government to say ‘let us find better regulations rather than banning the animal altogether’.”

She said their scientific team has indicated that in about three months they would be able to reveal the immediate indications from the DNA analysis.

Didiza said the department will partner with the Pit Bull Federation of SA to form a joint task team.

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The federation’s manager, Lehanda Rheeder, said the task team’s mandate is to assist the government in gathering information on pit bulls, the types of attacks happening, and to help government find a solution going forward.

Rheeder said the federation understands why the public is outraged, and said that they sympathise with them.

[People] have the right to be angry. The attacks that we have seen, from the viewpoint of the federation, were never supposed to have happened.

“Our dogs are not supposed to be human-aggressive and are not supposed to be taught to be human-aggressive and that is a very big concern for [us]. That is why we would like to take hands with the public and the government to rectify the situation and to help educate dog owners on how to live in harmony with their dogs.”

Rheeder said the problem of the dog attacks is a complex issue and the blame cannot be put just on the dogs and also not just on the owners. She said it’s a combination of many factors coming together.

[A big part is played by] the owners and the handling of the dogs is a problem but we also have a breeding problem with these types of dogs.

“People think they can put two power breeds together to get a nice dog that can provide them with protection in their social environment, but that is not how breeding works,” she said