Please take the time to comment and make a difference. However, please make sure your comments are factual, outlining the why's and the wherefore's of your objections and at the same time, coming up with suitable options. Should you also wish to take time out to send your opinion to the letters pages of various newspapers, please do so. We must be heard.

Please note that there has already been comment made by government officials themselves that these new by-laws will not be easy to enforce and that although there is a limit proposed, one should be able to pay for a permit to keep more animals, so there is no reason to panic unnecessarily.

However, at the same time, our voices MUST be heard, so please do not remain silent and leave others to speak up. Make your opinion and voices heard in the forum in which it counts.

For further information, please read the report below.

 

Independent Online

Animal lovers to fight 'draconian' bylaw

Source: www.iol.co.za

By Eve Vosloo | October 01 2008

Animal lovers and welfare organisations are preparing to mount a legal challenge to proposed amendments to the city of Cape Town's animal bylaws that will limit households to two dogs or two cats each.

This was decided at a meeting attended by about 25 representatives of animal welfare organisations, city councillor and lawyer Frank Raymond and lawyer and labour court commissioner John Brown.

Aspects of the bylaws, including the intention to confiscate "excess" animals and put them, and strays, into pounds and destroy them after seven to 10 days, were decried as draconian and in violation of the Bill of Rights.

The meeting was hosted by Clifton Roux, convenor of the City Wide Forum's animal and human development sector and attended by, among others, Jeanette Hesse, member of the forum's management committee, Kairen Brooke-Anderson of the Caspian Alexander Trust for Under-Privileged Animals, Beryl Scott of Beauty without Cruelty, June Bradbury of the Cat Trapping and Sterilisation Network, Cicely Blumberg, founder of Adopt-a-Pet, and Dagmar Atkinson of Vet Sol, an organisation devoted to animal sterilisation.

Victoria Short, the mother of two primary school children who has six cats, told the meeting: "How can I explain to my little girls that they have to choose which two of their cats they can keep and which four will be killed? Their trauma would be inconceivable."

Hesse said: "We, as South Africans, are used to authoritarianism and we need to rethink this. We all have the constitutional right to be part of the legal process."

Several representatives said the answer to animal population control lay in sterilisation.

Said Atkinson: "Municipalities like Bergriver, Theewaterskloof, Riversdale, etc, fund Vet Sol to sterilise animals and there are very few that are left unneutered or unspayed in these areas. Perhaps Cape Town can follow suit."

Blumberg, of Adopt-a-pet, said: "No public participation and consultation has taken place with members of poor communities, whose animals will bear the brunt of the bylaws.

"Instead of going after 'soft targets', inspectors or council officials should concentrate on eradicating backyard breeding and dog fighting, informal abattoirs, gangsters who mutilate animals, the 'cultural' killing and torture of bulls, hunting and "canned" hunting.

"Animals are often seen as part of people's families. If they are looked after and are not a nuisance to neighbours, what is the problem if they have more than two?"

Anyone who wants to have an input before the comment deadline of October 30 can contact Clifton Roux on 021 671 0238.

Objections can also be made at any of the sub-council or other municipal offices and usually on the city's website.