- "Cruelty to animals shows a person has no heart,
no soul."
-
- PRETORIA, South Africa --
Ruling party militants chased the puppy's owners from their farm in Zimbabwe,
then turned on the Labrador mix, gouging out its eyes.
-
- Bloodied and wounded, the puppy wandered the bush for
days before volunteers rescued the dog and airlifted it to safety in neighboring
South Africa.
-
- The dog, Batty, is one of some 3,000 pets evacuated to
South Africa after being abandoned amid Zimbabwe's chaotic seizure of white-owned
farms over the past three years.
-
- More than half the rescued animals have been reunited
with their owners, while the rest have found new homes in South Africa.
-
- "Many of the farmers and their families have lost
everything, so it means a lot to be reunited with their pets," said
Fiona Manuel, a volunteer at Wetnose Animal Rescue, a shelter that takes
in the abandoned animals.
-
- Zimbabwe's government has confiscated at least 5,000
white-owned farms, devastating the agriculture sector in a country already
in turmoil from political unrest and the economic policies of President
Robert Mugabe.
-
- Mugabe defends the practice of seizing the farms for
redistribution to impoverished blacks, saying the land is being returned
to its rightful owners.
-
- At the Wetnose shelter, in the South African capital
of Pretoria, volunteers deal with a little-known result of the program:
the abandonment of thousands of animals.
-
- Many animals, including dogs, cats, hamsters, rabbits,
geese, swans, horses and cattle have been slaughtered. Others are cruelly
treated: One rescued dog had acid poured over its coat.
-
- "I don't understand how there can be this cruelty,"
Manuel said. "Perhaps it is to spite the owners, knowing how much
they love their animals."
-
- Batty, who was renamed by the veterinarian who cleaned
and stitched his wounds in Zimbabwe before he reached Pretoria, was left
permanently blind. The whereabouts of its owners, whose farm was seized
a year ago, are unknown.
-
- "Some say it's cruel to keep a blind dog, but we
don't put down blind people, do we?" said Pippa Nairn, who adopted
the dog and took it home to Cape Town.
-
- Nine months after its rescue, the dog is wary of strangers
and becomes agitated by noise.
-
- But it has found a companion and guide in Fudge, Nairn's
2-year-old Alsatian mix.
-
- "It has worked extremely well. They are inseparable,
they are ideal companions," she said.
-
- Animal activists work discreetly in Zimbabwe for fear
of retribution by ruling party militants.
-
- British Airways flies the rescued animals to South Africa
at no charge. They are dewormed, inoculated and sterilized at the nonprofit
Wetnose center.
-
-
-
- The numbers arriving in Pretoria have started to decline
now that most white farmers have fled the country, Manuel said.
-
- Many have been reunited with their families who moved
to South Africa. When a shipment of 90 animals arrived last year, the owners
of 22 of them were there to welcome them.
-
- "The owners waiting here were in tears when we drove
in," Manuel said.
-
- Nairn, who runs a taxi business in Cape Town, rejects
criticism that the time and money spent rescuing pets could be better spent
alleviating human suffering in the deeply impoverished country.
-
- "Cruelty to animals shows a person has no heart,
no soul," she said.
-
- Copyright © 2004 The Associated Press. All rights
reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority
of The Associated Press.
-
- http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=515&ncid=721&e=9&u=/ap/2
0040117/ap_on_re_af/zimbabwe_animal_rescue
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