Blog: Cora's Devotion

“You helped our dogs, and you taught us that life is precious, and that animals count”: Cora tells the story of her devotion to helping the animals and people in South Africa's townships.

The concept of Community Led Animal Welfare (CLAW) was born during the death throes of apartheid, at the very height of what we called the ‘unrest years’.

Nelson Mandela had been released from prison, and while new dispensation was being thrashed out at the highest level, the most vicious factional and political violence was racking our townships.

The acclaimed war photographer James Nachtwey said later that South Africa’s townships were the most dangerous battlefield he had ever worked in. More dangerous than Rwanda or Chechnya, Somalia or the Gulf.

I was the manager of a local SPCA, and got a phone call one morning from a policeman who asked if I could help the animals in a small squatter community. The residents had fled after they had been attacked by an armed Zulu impi leaving behind their pets.

29 people had been killed, 30 more injured, burnt shacks smouldered and police vehicles and morgue vans seemed to be everywhere. On closer inspection dogs seemed to be everywhere as well, and we landed up rescuing more than 210 animals from the ruins.

Cora and Moses, a young man she met as a small boy, with his dog Razor - "Moses is a child I first came across some years ago when he was literally scavenging on the dump for food. He comes to me when he needs me or when life is just too hard." Source: SBS

What I saw in Swanieville made me determined to focus my energy on assisting the animal victims of political violence. Together with my long-time friend De Villiers Katywa we started CLAW.

More than 20 years later, and we are still helping animals and people who suffer mainly as a result of  political ineptitude leading to corruption, poor service delivery, access to decent education and healthcare and above all grinding poverty which affects millions in this beautiful country.

And yet people still have their pets, and those pets have to be cared for and the pets have become the catalyst for developing the humanitarian side of CLAW’s work.

We take the ‘community’ part of our title very seriously, and our mantra is that ‘at the end of every leash there is an owner’. Given the day to day realities of the communities we work in, it is impossible to ignore the plight of owners and to instead focus entirely on their pets.  

We focus on humane education, providing primary veterinary care support for township pets, and humanitarian support for their owners with provision of food parcels, clothing, blankets and helping people get access to much needed grants, and healthcare.

For two weeks, Amos Roberts rode ‘shotgun’ with me for Dateline’s story, Cora’s Pet Project.

Cora in the clinic at Durban Deep, treating one of a family's two guard dogs. The owner says "If one get sick, me also I’m sick, because it’s my good security at home." Source: SBS

Leaving in the early morning with me, getting covered in sick from ill dogs, attending to late night veterinary and human emergencies, and generally seeing the very worst but also, I hope, some of the best.

This morning I received a call from a policeman at Boons, a small rural police station in one of the more remote places we serve. He told me he had found a dove with a broken wing, and that he had strapped it up and was caring for it, but could I collect it.

The policeman told me that “you helped our dogs, and you taught us that life is precious, and that animals count”. He couldn’t bring himself to kill the bird.

So tomorrow I’ll be driving to Boons to fetch the dove – and I’ll know that I’ve done my job right, and that CLAW is making a difference for animals and people.

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