South Africans Evict Cats from Parliament in Cape Town and Imprison Them in Mandela's Old Hellhole

During the heyday of apartheid, South Africa was known as a bastion of racism, violence, disease, and naked exploitation of both man and nature. Under new management, the most odious aspects of institutionalized racism have pretty much disappeared but crime, corruption, and AIDS remain rampant.

Another constant in South African society is the systematic abuse and extermination of cats who have fared no better under black rule than they did under the colonialists. A good case in point was the South Africans' recent decision to forcibly remove a colony of feral cats from the grounds of Parliament in Cape Town (See photo above) and transfer them to Pollsmoor Prison in the suburb of Tokai.

Pollsmoor is a notorious maximum-security hellhole that is known for murders, gang violence, and sexual assaults. Home to more than seven-thousand hardened criminals and a staff of thirteen-hundred, the facility once housed Nelson Mandela (See photo below) and the Scissor Murderess, Marlene Lehnberg.

The cats are being trapped and removed from Parliament because they are allegedly stinking up the grounds with their feces and urine and thereby creating a health hazard. "People complained to the committee because of the smell and it was decided that the airborne bacteria from their feces was a health risk," Amanda Kleyn, who works for Parliament and has been feeding the cats, told The Pretoria News on September 15th. (See "Parliament's 'Fat Cats' Off to Jail.")

The capitalist media is silent on the number of cats involved. All that has been reported so far is that the cats will be tested for disease and sterilized before being taken to Pollsmoor. This lack of candor can be attributed to the probability that a significant number of them will be exterminated under one pretext or another and will therefore never make it to the prison.

Moreover, life will be extremely difficult for even those cats that are relocated because they will be expected to catch mice for the bulk of their sustenance. "Their food supplies will be quite meager," Andries Venter of the Cape of Good Hope SPCA, which has agreed to trap and relocate the cats, confessed to The Pretoria News.

He went on to lie through his teeth by declaring, "Hungry cats make better rat-catchers." Au contraire, in his seminal work, The Tiger in the House, noted feline authority Carl Van Vechten arrives at the exact opposite conclusion as do numerous cat-hating bird advocates.

Needless to say, if prison officials are unwilling to provide food, water, and veterinary care for the cats they are dooming them to brief, disease-plagued lives. Of course, this may very well be their intent.

Au premier coup d'oeil, it may seem odd that the SPCA would be involved in such a fiendish plot in the first place but this is merely par for the course as far as it is concerned. Zum Beispiel, the organization's Alan Perrins only recently assisted sharpshooters in gunning down cats on Robben Island. (See Cat Defender posts of March 23, 2006 and April 27, 2006 entitled, respectively, "South Africans, Supported by Ailurophobic PETA, Are Slaughtering More Cats on Robben Island" and "Cat-Hating Monster Les Underhill and Moneygrubbing Robben Island Museum Resume Slaughtering Cats in South Africa.") A few of these cats who were lucky enough to escape the assassins have also been relocated to Pollsmoor.

Prisons are not necessarily the best habitats for cats. First of all, communal living arrangements whether they be college dormitories, homeless shelters, or whatever are rife with communicable diseases.

Secondly, although introducing kittens to minimum-security and medium-security institutions has proven to be beneficial to both felines and inmates alike, forcing them to live with hardened criminals puts their delicate lives in mortal danger. (See Cat Defender post of October 27, 2005 entitled "Inmates at Women's Prisons in California Save Lives by Fostering Feral Kittens.") This is especially true of a society that is so violent and perverted that even college students kill cats for fun. (See Cat Defender post of September 22, 2005 entitled "College Students in South Africa Cook a Cat to Death in a Microwave Oven.")

Despite all of this, the cats' greatest danger at Pollsmoor will come from prison officials who, like those at Avenal in California, may attempt to exterminate them. (See Cat Defender post of September 29, 2006 entitled "Avenal State Prison Reverts to Its Old Ailurophobic Ways by Scrapping TNR Program and Cutting Off Cats' Food Supply.")

The absence of a bona fide animal rights group with unfettered access to the prison to monitor their well-being only underscores the perils that the cats are going to face in their new home.

Although no information is available on the web as to how cats living at Pollsmoor have fared over the years, apparently a few of them have managed to make it out alive. Par exemple, handsome little Percy (See photo above) has been advertised on Kitty Kat's website as being formerly from Pollsmoor.

If the South Africans were not so cheap and draconian they would allocate resources in order to find either good homes or sanctuaries for all of their homeless cats. Neither those cats from Parliament nor those from Robben Island belong at Pollsmoor.

Photos: Friedrich Naumann Foundation (Parliament), Center for Conflict Resolution (Mandela), and Kitty Kat (Percy).