Don’t eat meat, be a vegan. Don’t abuse your pet. Don’t wear make up tested on animals. Fur is murder. We have all clicked on a shared page on our Facebook newsfeeds to view an NGO-made video on the inhumane slaughtering of “innocent” animals for leather boots, or a tormented bear rocking back and forth, psychologically broken and chained to a circus cage.
Don’t eat meat, be a vegan. Don’t abuse your pet. Don’t wear make up tested on animals. Fur is murder. We have all clicked on a shared page on our Facebook newsfeeds to view an NGO-made video on the inhumane slaughtering of “innocent” animals for leather boots, or a tormented bear rocking back and forth, psychologically broken and chained to a circus cage.
We sign petitions to “put a stop to” the brutal treatment of poor Ellie the Elephant in some country so an organisation can present it to its government.
Watched it, signed it and became a vegetarian, I am an animal activist.
Not so fast bunny hugger.
This kind of animal activism is shallow and rarely follows up on what happens to poor Ellie. The problem is out of sight, out of mind.
Animal injustice is unseen to the degree it becomes invisible and then becomes imagined.
We renounce domination and oppression and weep when we see someone whipping a donkey on Beaufort Street, yet we tuck into a Steers burger at our next meal.
It’s all part of the same struggle.
“You stroke your cat and then stab a cow with your fork,” said Michele Pickover, animal activist and author, last week at Rhodes, “there is a lack of consistency in animal activism”.
Pickover spoke in one of many talks hosted by the Rhodes Organisation for Animal Rights during last week’s Animal Rights Week entitled 'Animal Rights in South Africa: Are animals’ interests and their liberation being served?’.
One main issue Pickover emphasised was the hypocrisy of humanitarian activists.
Social activists join a revolution against social injustice and oppression and yet they sit by and do to animals what they are fighting against for humans.
“Harassed, displaced, refugees, hunted, kidnapped, abducted, tortured and they lead a life of slavery in zoos and circuses,” were just a few words used by Pickover to describe the injustices done to non-humans.
We live in a hegemonic hierarchical world where humans are obviously at the top of the pyramid. The animals’ struggles are the same as human suffering.
Capitalism, dominant elites, the market and neo-imperialism drive discontent and injustice amongst the human race and in the animal world.
We are fighting the same fight for humans and animals, but many don’t recognise this.
In the words of famous Australian animal activist and philosopher Peter Singer, “if possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his or her ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit non-humans?”
And as Pickover said, “It’s a massive revolution, we probably won’t see it in our lifetime. But that doesn’t mean you can’t work towards it.”
So join the fight for the future goal.
