PERSPECTIVE

ANIMAL RIGHTS I

Greenpeace, Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and other armchair hyprocrites have had a field day challenging age old practises and beliefs, some cultural, the world over. They have most often done so in total disregard of the diversity and cultures of other people within which they opeate.

They are not really divorced from the folks who will oppose animal culling while not providing a solution to the control of the burgeouning numbers which destroy their own ecosystem apart from shouting translocation and sterilization as if they'll provide the moolah for those activities.

A decade ago, in Brazil, there were allegations that the government approved the systematic cleansing of streetkids to curb rising vagabond numbers, control crime and boost tourism.
We've seen the same being done in Greece prior to the Olympics two years ago. Fresh stray dogs that have characterised the Athens landscape for years suddenly woke up dead on the streets.

Yes, my point today is the hypocrisy that characterises organisations that claim to champion animal rights. The same ones that proposed that a moratorium be imposed against the killing and eating of dog-meat during the 1998 FIFA World Cup in Japan/Korea. They propose a moratorium on something that has prevailed for the past hundreds of years.

A 17-year-old consious rapper named Tupac Amaru Shakur once told a TV interviewer that there are many organisations advocating on behalf of animals but none for people. While he was not the most intelligent boy then or made sense all the time, his analysis of human relations was on point.

Reference from the reliable time tested history book informs that during the slave trade, when darkies were sharecroppers in the United States Deep South, lynching of rebellious Negroes was rampant. It was not a sight for sore eyes to wake up in the morning and be met by Fracis Brown hanging from a fig tree because the Massa (Simon Legree) felt he did not know how to act. Actually, all Brown did was to whip an arrogant horse.

The very same organisations which were there for the protection of horses were doing nothing to challenge the murder of human beings. Actually they were saying darkie life is cheaper than that of animals. The same Caucasians were laughing their bowels out when the Ku Klux Klan was continuing the tradition post-slave trade. And now they act like they know something about darkies, if not only that we often bleed the same.

ANIMAL RIGHTS II

Def Jam Recordings label President Sean Carter, otherwise known to teenagers as Jay-Z once echoed a very rich line which advised my interrogation of this subject, 'standing back from situations gives you a perfect view'. Kasiekulture was no doubt tempted to comment when former African National Congress Chief Whip and convicted criminal Tony Yengeni was rebuked for having slaughtered a beast to cleanse himself of bad spirits. Tony slaughtered a beast and suddenly that affects the value of the rand in the vocabulary of some people?

Look, Africans have been slaughtering beasts since time immemorial. Exactly when we'll need to hook up a one on one with Kara Heritage Institute's Dr Mathole Motshega. The fact is, we've always been killers. When an infant is introduced to the ansestors they slaughter, when they move into a new house the same happens, when there's death, derobing, a wedding, cleansing, hell, Africans will always find reason to shed blood - the blood of a beast. They say they do it because the Bible says Jesus Christ shed His blood to mediate between creation and God and thus Bantus do the same to be brought closer to their ansestors. Remember that before Jesus Christ (in BC) that's how humans related to God, by slaughtering beasts and spilling the blood.

Do you remember Abraham about to slaughter his only son Isaac? Where was SPCA when he in turn slaughtered a sheep? No one, especially when they are not Africans should think they can teach darkies how to act. Remember that anyone who is not black is not an African until they embrace the continent, its people and culture. That's when a settler becomes a native. No matter how long you stay in China you'll never be Chinese until your eyes are slit and you lose height. In the meantime you can't dictate to the Chinese but do as the Romans do in Rome.

Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana retaliated in the Tony saga by inviting the SPCA to witness another slaughter instead of stressing over a criminal's redemption antics. They did not show up, coward sods.

Ask yourself if this people really feel for these poor animals or they just don't have causes to support. They are rebels without a cause. Former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein was hanged infront of cameras by cowards behind hoods. A Security Advisor Mowaffak Al-Rubaie even proudly testified about how he heard the neck snap. Did anyone hear any of the holier-than-thou animal rights activists condemning the act - hell no!

Then two years ago the US Army in Iraq was so excited that they have killed a man they fabricated and called Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. After what they called a direct aerial hit they showed to the media a nicely framed picture of a dead man only them knew as al Zarqawi. Is the killing and exposing of dead people worse than what Tony did to a beast?

ANIMAL RIGHTS III
In December I was deployed by DRUM magazine to cover the wedding of former Chiskop band member Sphiwe 'General' Msibi (above) and Pearl Masuku in Phababorwa. Now Phalaborwa is one of those small laager towns where the boers still find comfort in their miniature residence between the four wheels of an ossewa.

Obviously, when it's darkies marrying you should expect the spilling of blood. But now that the affluent Masuku family are patched in the eye of the storm, surrounded by boers who don't know how to act, who if it was in the Deep South and they were negroes would have been lynched for that alone, it became an issue.

Just as we are chilling over tea and cookies two young SPCA volunteers dressed in blue funny overalls and driving a battered Nissan 1400 arrive and make it clear that they 'came to confiscate the goat'. The father, the type that doesn't take shit asks them in Afrikaans who told them that there's goat?

Now, they've got these Bantus ganging up around them because we know how and before we could start toyi-toying the young girls says the call came from Anonymous. The father then informs them that there's no goat and that it's part of 'ons kultuur' and constitutional rights to practise it anywhere and anyhow in South Africa.

They demand to see the condition under which the beast is kept. 'Dis n skaap nie a bokkie nie', he enlightens them. While they are examining the beast I wonder if they would have shown the same enthusiasm had Anonymous called and informed them that Steve Scott-Crossley was about to throw a darkie in a lion enclosure. Would they have rushed if Anonymous told them that a boer had just shot a dog belonging to his gardener? This is not being racist but seeing things in black and white.

Now the father shows them the beast while the white neighbours are peeping through their security walls and the father comments loudly that it's the white neighbours who lack the backbone to use their own European names when they whinged to the SPCA. I see them embarassed and retreating to the confort of their ossewa.

They looked embarassed the same way the US State Department felt when a video tape of Samuel Doe (former Liberia's president) was aired showing him being mutilated and castrated by Charles Taylor's rebels. He died a day later.

I looked at the sheep, it will eventually be killed honourably by the Msibi family, not mutilated while being videod. Its pictures will not be framed and shown to the media. Its rights will not be violated.

ANIMAL RIGHTS IV

Now, in England, where adultrer Prince Charles Windsor is the makhulubaas there is a SPCA branch that deals ruthlessly with whoever slaughters a beast at a non-demarcated zone - a non-abattoir.

For some time I have wondered if it's aware that Prince Charles has a habit of shooting foxes which should be classified endangered by Cites. Okay, I've never seen fox, which makes it extinct in my part of the world. Charles and his royal buddies call this barbaric activity fox hunting. We all know that you don't hunt that which you can not kill.

Here comes the double standards. If fox hunting was practised by an ethnic group called the Shangaan, Xhosa, Zulu, Swati, Ndebele, Pulana, Sotho, Tsonga, Maori, Aboriginal, San or Shona you'll have had friends of Greenpeace and SPCA picketing the United Nations headquarters in New York calling for a ban. But now that it's a royal sport, it's okay, let the future King of England kill the beasts.

The Emperor of Japan wouldn't go sperm whaling without Greenpeace disrupting such a hobby. President Thabo Mbeki can't puff his pipe in peace without being accused of contributing to global warming.

Some few years ago US Vice president Dick Cheney was accused of accidentally shooting lawyer-friend Harry Whittington during a quail hunting outing at the Armstrong Ranch. Why is it so easy for them to go around shooting at birds without the SPCA and like-minded organisations causing ruckus? Poor Cheney is also rumoured not to have a firearm license but nobody quizzed him about that. It's like driving without a license.

And it very much reflects what Marshal Matthers (EMINEM to teenagers) yepped in one song that he couldn't smuggle a pellet gun past customs and wonders where all the Uzzis (Israeli made) and Kalashnikovs (Eastern model) in the US all come from. Ask Cheney.

Even in our sunny African shores, rich Westerners pay tens of thousands of dollars to hunt down a buck or lion, leopard, cheetah, tiger, elephant or rhinocerous just to shoot it and orgasm. And some of these lucrative hunts, like the white lion are endangered, but as long as you've got moolah, fuck the law, bribe the hypocrites who claim to protect animal rights.

ANIMAL RIGHTS V

In Spain there's no way SPCA will instruct them to abandon the age old sport of bullfighting. Watching matadors wave a red flag to engage a raging bull is a national pastime. That the bull might end up fracturing its own neck is immaterial. It's all in the name of culture. If R.Kelly was to re-remix 'Happy People' he'll obviously yell, 'if they ask you why we did it/ tell them/ we did it for culture'.

Before convincing Spaniards that it's human error when a bull harms itself due to anger there's no way anyone will win a verbal contest against Bantus and their cultural rituals.

After making all the noise SPCA and Greenpeace activists/volunteers retreat to restaurants and enjoy sumptous chicken, steak or hake without asking questions. The chicken, sheep, cattle, swine, goats and fish we eat were not abbatoired while under local anaesthetic. They feel the whole nine yards of the pain and we chow them with pleasure.

The message; leave, not only convict Tony but all Africans alone. If you can't stand the fire (culture) stay the hell out of the kitchen (Africa). Last we checked there was a country called Australia where the Aboriginals are outnumbered, outgunned and outcultured.

UPDATE: Xhosa Chiefs have demanded that the SABC slaughter a beast and apologise for screening a drama that exposed their initiation.

Cultural experts argued that the Kennedy's woud have been spared death had they performed a simple ritual, which would have included the slaughtering of a beast.