October 2023 We are so grateful to those taking taking the lead on impending legal action against the authorities, and we are a complainant in this matter.
We started focussing on our Chacma Baboons when Fred Baboon was killed by authorities. Images published by the Argus in 2011, were x-rays of Fred’s pellet-ridden body after he was killed 25 Mar 2011. There were over 70 pellets lodged in his body. Fred was the alpha male of the Smitswinkel troop until his death.
We have been assisting the baboon focussed organisations and individuals, we have written, petitioned, demonstrated, called officials, over and over during the course of a couple of decades, and thus far all for naught. It’s less that no one is listening, it’s more that we are all being studiously ignored.
For over two decades we have had assorted official task teams with various acronyms, all consisting of the same people / authorities, all making the same promises of recognising and confirming the importance of baboon proof bins, enforced waste management, traffic calming measure (for example speed bumps) insolation of electrical infrastructure, strategic fencing and law enforcement, and all the same non-delivery on their promises, even while recognising the urgency of implementation.
Baboons are dying, they are being shot by residents, hit by cars, electrocuted and by the authorities themselves, some of whom see them only as a means to a thesis.
The reports, minutes of meetings and court documents confirm that the City, Sanparks and Cape Nature had a duty of care, as well as a statutory and constitutional duty to protect our baboons and implement the solutions that they have identified, which they have spectacularly failed to do.
We wrote to Marianne Nieuwoudt in 2021, regarding the killing of Bolo, the baboon taken in by the Cape of Good Hope SPCA and determined to be healthy for release after they had provided medical attention.
- Why does the media statement regarding the killing of Bolo not appear on the City of Cape Town Facebook page or website?
- Why were sanctuaries like CARE which would have offered Bolo a home, not given the opportunity to take him?
- Why have humans still not been educated, required to have baboon proof bins, been on the receiving end of punitive action for littering, leaving food out, and therefore being the reason baboons forage in bins and towns in the first place?
- Why is there a determination to continue lose to voters over the appalling ‘management’ of our local wildlife?
- Why are proactive, wildlife aware residents and citizen animal experts, with decades of experience and knowledge continually side-lined and ignored over academics, who simply want to use the baboons for their own ends, for research papers?
Bolo, like so many before him, and since, had been failed by the City of Cape Town.