Animals in Circuses Email Petition

Dear Messrs Premier Winde, Mayor Hill-Lewis, Cllr Nqavashe, Cllr Bresler, Mr. Botha, and Alderman Smith

The DA’s Federal Council accepted a resolution in Durban on 26 July 2015, acknowledging that non-human animals are sentient beings, able to feel the same pain and emotions as humans. Sentience is the ability to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively and the recognition of an emotional dimension. The concept is central to the philosophy of animal freedoms, because sentience is necessary for the ability to suffer; and mostly ignored by modern society,

At the Federal Congress in April 2023, the Democratic Alliance resolved that a DA Municipal, Provincial and National Government will enact legislation which puts an immediate end to the inclusion of wild animals in circuses.

It is April 2024, and I eagerly await the public participation required before by-laws can be ratified. The circus, to my dismay, is back in the City of Cape Town jurisdiction with wild animals, as the bylaws are not yet in place.

I urge action in this matter. Circus animals spend months travelling in small, bare cages. The stress of continued confinement as well as the transportation result in long term suffering and a lack of appropriate social interaction, reduction in time spent foraging, and the restricted freedom to perform natural behaviours represent stressors for captive animals. A natural environment cannot be recreated in a circus due to the traveling, with inadequate accommodation and exercise areas, forced movement, handling by humans, noise, along with the confinement which ultimately results in both short-term as well as long-term behavioural and psychological effects.

The NSPCA, along with animal welfare organisations internationally, roundly condemns animals in the circus.

The City of Cape Town, in particular, and the Western Cape Province should be the leader on the continent in this regard.

I look forward to urgent attention to this long standing matter.

Yours sincerely