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van der merwe / caring for animals and humans | 281 Compassionate Lifestyle mental health is diminished by the ubiquitous evidence of animal neglect and cruelty. “The link is there,” says Kaliski . “Someone who is cruel and violent to animals will also be so to people. We need to sensitise a desensitised nation and the younger we start, the better” (“Domestic Violence” 3). One insight into the interrelationship between one form of violence and the other is provided by Rosemary Cox, manager of the Saartjie Baartman shelter for battered women and their children, near Cape Town. She comments, “Sometimes a man will use an animal as a weapon against his wife. If he sees that she loves her little dog, for instance, he will hurt it in order to hurt her. In cases like this, the trauma for the wife is more severe than if he had simply beaten her up” (“Domestic Violence” 3). In the last quarter of the year 2000, the Humane Education Trust was given the opportunity to rekindle a spirit of care and respect for life in eleven of the Western Cape’s most disadvantaged and violence-torn schools. The Western Cape Education Department agreed that humane education, as a pilot project, would get a threemonth opportunity to establish its value and benefit to schoolchildren. P. W. Roux, a clinical psychologist with six years’ experience in the rehabilitation of criminals, was chosen to assess the impact of the project on a scientific basis. He concluded that humane education was an “overwhelmingly positive” influence in the lives of the learners (Caring Classrooms). Most noteworthy to those involved in the project, however , was the obvious sense of self-worth that the project generated among the children themselves. In learning to care about the well-being of animals, they also learned to care more about each other, and most importantly, they developed a sense of their own individual value. One boy, Brendan, in grade ten, gave this positive evaluation: “Humane education gave me a new pair of eyes. Everything I look at now, I see differently. Nowadays, I don’t throw stones at stray dogs anymore, and I give that thief-cat, that always hangs at our door, our leftover food . . . I feel really proud about it” (Caring Classrooms). Caring for animals and humans Animal protectionists living in South Africa are sometimes asked whether ethical concern for animals is really a luxury, even an indulgence. Dare we, in Africa, care about the well-being of animals while so many of our people are dying of hunger, of AIDS, or in violent civil conflict? It is certainly a question worth pondering. The statistics of abuse and violence in South Africa are staggering. The murder rate is the highest in the world. A rape occurs every twenty-five seconds. One in three girls and one in four boys will be sexually molested before adulthood. In some communities, drive-by shootings and gang warfare in the streets have become a daily hazard. To care about animals in this context might appear misplaced and unbalanced, even antihuman. And yet there is a growing awareness that animal abuse and cruelty, far from being peripheral to the problem, might actually be linked to the problem of violence against humans. Consider, for example, the impassioned plea of Wikus Gresse, chairman of the parole board at Pollsmoor Prison near Cape Town, featured in a 2001 documentary: “Teach people how to care” (Caring Classrooms). Gresse’s words are telling because he is the founder of one of the most successful criminal rehabilitation projects in the world today. Gresse has seen firsthand the healing power inherent in the gentle art of caring for animals. “The Bird Project,” as it is known, enables prisoners to hand-rear lovebirds, cockatiels, and parrots for ultimate sale to avid bird-keepers. Of course there is much irony in prisoners receiving benefit from perpetuating the imprisonment of other species, but the therapeutic value of learning to care is noteworthy. Gresse is unequivocal: “If these people [the inmates], as youngsters, had been given the chance of humane education , of learning how to care—some of them would most probably not be here today.” Neither is his a lone voice. Professor Sean Kaliski, head of forensic psychiatry at Valkenburg hospital in Cape Town, goes as far as to say that the entire nation’s 282 | ey ton / caring shopping These programs show that there is a much deeper link between animal and human abuse than even many animal...

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