Zimbabwe’s Voiceless
Victims |
Thousands of animals
have been left abandoned in Zimbabwe’s
land resettlement program seeing the ZSPCA (Zimbabwe Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) carry out one of
the largest animal rescues in recent history. Meryl Harrison,
Chief Inspector of ZSPCA, speaks to Paws & Claws of her
harrowing journey attempting to save the animals of Zimbabwe
from falling victim to the country’s ongoing political
frenzy.
Meryl
Harrison aka "The Mother Theresa of Animals"
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Imagine
having to flee your home taking only what you could
fit in your vehicle and driving away leaving
behind your beloved pets and your livestock, seeing
them for the last time, not knowing which misfortune
lay ahead for them, as you drive past angry armed mobs.
In Zimbabwe that is exactly what hundreds and hundreds
of families in rural areas are facing with the country’s
land resettlement program.
Most people know what
happened to the farmers but very few people have any
idea what happened to the animals, and I believe they
bore the viciousness of the farm invasions. The farmers
drove off and the animals were left behind, and it
was taken out on them because they belong to the farmer,
said Meryl Harrison, ZSPCA’s Chief Inspector
for the past five years.
Meryl explains how
some families, after going into town, would return
to find the roads barricaded off.They were kept away
from their home and all their possessions, with no
knowledge of what was going to happen. Some houses
were burnt down, torn apart, and ransacked, while some
farm animals and pets were made to suffer torturous
deaths as a word of warning to other farmers to get
off their farms with haste.
Their pets and their
livestock were all on the other side. Then they’d
try to go back, perhaps with a police escort, saying ‘Please
can we have our pets’ and just to be difficult
these thugs would say ‘No. Push off. This farm
is ours now’, said Meryl. |
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Robert Mugabe, who has
ruled the African nation since 1980 and has been the country’s
only President since its independence from Britain, promised
peace and equal land divisions through the land resettlement
program. However with white farmers being forced to abandon
their farms and blacks given no money or education for
taking over the farming activities, the country has fallen
into chaos on numerous levels.
Out of about 4,500 commercial
farmers, only about 160 remain on farms, she said. Even
this week they are all having a hard time; some of them
are being beaten up.
Many people began leaving
the country and, although some people were able to move
their animals into town or nearby farms, the riding schools
filled up fast, as did any neighbouring farms, and in the
end ZSPCA had to go and shoot animals on the farms.
Then you have the problem
that the carcasses must be moved. So we would have to cart
the carcasses to the lion parks and they’d say ‘Sorry
we had 10 horses come this week; we can’t cope with
any more’. So it was just a logistical nightmare.
At one farm we went to,
there were 500 pigs. The farmer had been kicked off. He
left stacks of food, but Mugabe’s thugs had invaded
the farm and wouldn’t let the workers feed the pigs.
So the pigs were starving.left without food for a week,
with all the piglets dying like flies up to 20 or 30 a
day.
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"Meryl
Harrison has been internationally recognised and awarded
for her bravery by the International RSPCA, The International
Fund for Animal Welfare, by the BBC in the UK, and Rotary
has bestowed its highest non-Rotarian honor on her: the Paul
Harris award."
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"All the pigs were stuck in sties.
The live pigs, because they are carnivorous, were eating
the dead pigs" she said.
Being appointed by the Zimbabwe Government meant permission
was needed before going onto each farm to collect the
animals. A list had to be drawn up before reaching the
farm, specifying each animal that was to be rescued.
If an extra cow or bull was found that had not been accounted
for on the list, it was strictly not to be included in
the rescue, leaving its survival to fate. And the fate
of countless animals lay in the hands of the ZSPCA team.
"In the end we only moved about 250 pigs. Then
they suddenly said ‘That’s it. You’re
not taking any more with you.’ We pleaded with
them, but they said ‘No. That’s it. Just
go.’ So we had to leave the other 250 behind," said
Meryl.
"We literally rescued everything from guinea pigs
to goldfish, right up to wild animals...and we hit the
ground running. There were no handbooks. I couldn’t
have picked up the phone and called RSPCA in the UK and
said ‘Can you send me a handbook on how to conduct
farm rescues?’ We had to fly by the seat of our
pants and sort of work it out ourselves."
Meryl revealed this was such a unique exercise because
in places like Bosnia, or anywhere where the welfare
of the animals is compromised because of politics, animal
welfare groups would only start going in once the hostilities
had finished. ZSPCA was going in and having to face these
mobs daily; mobs which would often be drunk, on drugs
and armed.
"The more aggressive they were,
the more we had to just keep calming things down. At
the end of the day there are animals there that need
you, and if you start getting uptight about it and saying ‘I’m
going to get the police’, or whatever, then you’re
not going to get those animals," explains Meryl. |
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"So, what we had to do was negotiate.
Our whole role as the SPCA was to remain impartial and
non-political, and that is why it worked. Over five years
we literally rescued thousands of animals and it was
because we tried not to have too much publicity."
"We had the power to arrest and
we’d do our own police codes, but we didn’t
prosecute. There were plenty of times we could have prosecuted
but I just thought ‘No that is just going to make
the situation worse’,"
she said.
"I did get death threats. I had
a death threat on the phone and I had a written death
threat. Basically they said ‘You are serving the
interest of the whites. We know you hate the blacks’.
And nothing could be further from the point because we
also rescued black families’ animals as well. I
don’t know who it (the letter) was from. It was
badly written and it said ‘We are vying for your
head. You are under spot lights. You’re given 24
hours to leave Harare where you operate from, which is
the capital city. All handwritten on a little piece of
paper."
Despite the threats ZSPCA had a good reputation in the
rural areas. When coming across a barricade, people would
begin to crowd around the ZSPCA car until someone would
say....It’s alright! It’s SPCA. I know they
help the donkeys."
The crowd would disperse and the truck would be let through.
However, Meryl speaks solemnly of her experiences travelling
to abandoned farms and seeing the destruction of people
lives on the floor. She recalls images of animals found
brutally mistreated, beaten and maimed. These cruel acts
were blatant messages for farmers to come and take their
animals.
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"This cruelty was perpetrated to harass the farmer.
We saw cows that had been axed and brutally tortured. This
is usually when the farmers had to get off the farm but they’ve
left a black manager on the property to look after the cattle,
so then the cattle start getting axed to send a message to
the farmer that if they don’t come and move their cattle,
then this is the sort of thing that is going to happen."
"The one thing about Zimbabwe is that we never got
calls for deliberate cruelty to animals like in western countries.
Previously all the calls were for neglect, poverty or ignorance.
This was something quite different. They know that white
or western families were so besotted about their pets and
it was a wonderful way to get back at them."
The ZSPCA team rescued and found homes for thousands of
abandoned animals,sometimes saving them from brutal conditions,
but other times were not so lucky. There were countless incidents
of animals found starved, beaten and maimed. One story of
a dog called Nandi particularly affected Meryl. The Australian
cattle dog, one of six pet dogs on this particular farm,
was found in the shower recess; the only part of the house
that had not burnt down, and with not an inch of his body
that had not been beaten.
"What had happened is that they (a
mob of Mugabe’s
supporters) had tied her up with wire and taken her about
15km away to another village and she thought ‘I’m
not putting up with this’. She chewed and chewed
at the wire until she got free...then she made her way all
that long distance home."
"A week later, I was walking on the
glass and the rubble and when I turned and looked in the
shower, not really expecting anything to be in there, I
saw Nandi lying there. She had a huge cut which the vet later
stitched up. I think she just put herself in that shower
because it was about the only place that was still complete."
To add to the family’s tragedy, a week after ZSPCA
had been at the farm, the mob also killed and ate Emily,
their pet Kudu (an African type of buck), which the family
had reared from young.
"When the family found out, it was
worse than losing their house and everything that was in
it. That just finished them. They were one of the top wheat
farmers in the country. They had always treated all their
workers so well. They had built a clinic on the farm and
a school ...and
that’s
just one family’s story."
Meryl claims the worst case they had over
the whole five years was a security company that only operated
in the rural areas and was run by a consortium of white commercial
farmers. Foreseeing the collapse, the workers began leaving
their dogs on farms all over a huge area of Western Zimbabwe
- tied to trees, gates, let loose, stuck in store-rooms.
"They arrested the CEO and shut him
and his wife in an office for five days. After about a week
the CEO phoned me and said ‘Meryl, I’m barricaded
in my office. Can you help? We’ve got 500 dogs out
there....I can’t even tell you where they are because
they’ve
destroyed the records’."
To add to this, the belittling and abuse
continues. "These animals are the silent victims of the tragedy
going on in Zimbabwe now," says Meryl.
Meryl calls the SPCA offices regularly to ask how they are
coping and what they might need.
"You can forget drugs," said
Meryl. "They
need cotton wool, latex gloves or bandages. They haven’t
even got those!"
"Although its doom and gloom, I want
people to know that there are still some fantastic people
out there who are trying very hard to keep animal welfare
going," Meryl
said.
"It will come right in Zimbabwe one day. I believe
it will. There are many people working tirelessly to see
this happen."
Yes!
Here are ways that you can help the animals in
Zimbabwe...
* The ZSPCA Hospitals in Harare
and Bullaweyah need latex gloves, cotton wool,
bandages (bright coloured and crepe), Eye Ointments,
Eye drops, Betadine, Savlon/Antiseptic, and
scrubbing brushes.
* The Equine groups are also
desperate for second-hand fly fringes and bright-coloured
reflector tape to go on the backs of donkey
carts.
* Please don’t send
money, by sending items listed above we are
ensuring it all goes to the animals.
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Photos
of rescued dog Nandi at http://www.vizara.com/zimrescue1.html |
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