Missing zoo bronze bust baffles
Heritage foundation questions no noise over missing bust.
JOBURG – A bronze bust of the man who wrote Jock of the Bushveld and founded the Johannesburg Zoo was stolen from its shelf in the old carnivore enclosure.
Despite the theft having occurred four years ago, no one appears to have said anything about it until now.
The Johannesburg Heritage Foundation’s Flo Bird said she noticed the bust of Sir James Percy FitzPatrick was missing when she took her grandchildren to the zoo a couple of weeks ago.
“I was shocked to see that the bust, erected in 1984 for the 80th birthday of the zoo, has disappeared,” said Bird.
“Below the bust’s stand are two plaques, one in English, one in Afrikaans, recording the unveiling by Mayor Eddie Magid. I definitely wasn’t imagining things,” she said.
“There has been no appeal for the public to watch out for it, or come forward if they have any information. It isn’t listed as a missing artwork, and its theft seems to be a secret. Can the people of Johannesburg start snooping around and find it?”
This year marks the zoo’s 110th anniversary, and while Bird acknowledged that the zoo had celebrated this milestone, she said that people “forgot” about FitzPatrick, the man who started the zoo by bringing animals home after each hunting trip, to amuse his children.
“There was a baby hippo which had the Parktown Spruit, which runs through Forest Town, as her splashing ground, and a lion that had lost one paw,” she said.
“When his wife wasn’t happy to have them in the house, he moved them down into the Sachsenwald (now the suburb of Saxonwold), where the plantation manager built enclosures…”
Bird questioned why Johannesburg City Parks and Zoo had kept quiet about the loss of this heritage item, whether its insurance company would pay for a new bust, and if there was a mould that could be used to cast a new one.
She also asked if the FitzPatrick family had been informed of the theft.
Johannesburg City Parks and Zoo spokesperson, Jenny Moodley said, “I have been advised that the bust was stolen sometime in 2010, during Dr Stephen Van Der Spuy’s time as CEO of Joburg Zoo. Efforts to locate it at that time were unsuccessful.”
Moodley appealed to the public for any information about possible whereabouts of the missing bust, and asked they contact the zoo.
Details: 011 646 2000; www.jhbzoo.org.za
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