The duplicity of humans never ceases to amaze me. Look at how all and sundry were willing to take up cudgels for an alien antelope, while they never so much as whimper when their fellow human beings are mocked, abused, exploited and then jailed because they are makwerekwere (aliens).
I anticipate there will be people who claim that, because animals cannot speak for themselves, they need a human voice to represent them. True.
But who said defending the rights of fellow humans, and in particular Africans in the diaspora, is the sole preserve of outfits such as the Roll Back Xenophobia campaign?
All the same, thanks to the public outcry, those of us who had never heard of the tahr, the Himalayan antelope brought by Cecil John Rhodes to these shores more than 70 years ago, were suddenly bombarded with news of their imminent demise.
The Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, was called upon to make his voice heard.
I may have missed it, but I have never heard the same sort of clamour for political leadership in the fight to protect the dignity of those whom we — with distorted affection — call kweres.
Minister of Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils, then minister of water affairs, once remarked that “people should be clear that only humans are aware of political boundaries. For the rest of the living world, in parti- cular for plants, boundaries are defined by the conditions to which they are adapted and their ability to reach suitable habitats”.
Kasrils was speaking in defence of the jacaranda, the alien tree originally from Argentina but now symbolic of Pretoria and the northern suburbs of Johannesburg.
While humans may be aware of borders, their hunger for jobs and a better life is more powerful than geography.
The street term for “thank you” in the townships is “ta”. I guess that is what we should say to the tahr for bringing the cancer of xenophobia to the dinner tables of those who otherwise would never have cared.
Hopefully, those outraged by the South African National Parks’ (SanParks) plans to shoot the tahrs will take a moment to think how we as South Africans treat other foreigners.
Sure, we don’t shoot foreigners on sight, but we make sure they know they aren’t wanted here.
Like the SanParks people, we reckon that these aliens tamper with our natural habitat and steal resources meant for indigenous species. But who cares? The tahr is exotic, while the Mozambican shoemaker reeks of body odour and should go home.
History and circumstance have conspired to put us all, despite our differences, on this soil.
We can either accept that or go on a fishing expedition to establish who really has a right to be here. I think it would be a futile exercise.
People who don’t understand the suffering of their fellow humans will find it hard to convince the rest of us that life as we know it will change if the rights of animals are not protected. As the government’s latest battle cry goes, Batho Pele — people should come first — and I would like to see a more vigorous campaign to save them.
And if we all agree that we are living in the nascence of the African century and that all of us are Africans because we owe our one and only loyalty to this continent, we should muster the same zeal for the fight against xenophobia as we did for our Himalayan transplants.