Colonised Mind

Dear Mr. President. Dear, dear dear Mr. President.

I don't often raise the energy to comment on the stuff which comes out of Jacob Zuma's mouth, anymore. Or I'd be here all day. But this latest piece of nonsense serves to highlight exactly where the president of South Africa's mind is sitting. And it's not a pretty place.

So, people who love dogs more than people have a lack of humanity, do they?

It seems to me that that was a giveaway statement all on its own. That there should be a hierarchy of love, that we can choose to love one species more than another. In my experience, that is not where people who are compassionate to non-human animals are coming from. They love fellow non-human creatures in the same way they love human creatures. If you love your canine companions, and spend time and money on them, does that mean that you don't love other humans? As if there were some limit on the amount we can love each other.

As if love for each other, for life, is a quantifiable commodity.

As if there were some scale of worthiness-to-be-loved, with humans on the top, naturally.

As if the local canine family members waited with loaded guns and malice a-thought to rob and brutalise others for their property.

Oh yes, I know how Zuma thinks of dogs - as property. It's very close to the way he thinks about women, actually.

This raising of humans above other creatures, this denigration of non-human life as less worthy of love, this commodifying of life, this is not Ubuntu.

Tell me: who truly has the colonised mind?

Pic: Found at Drinkalot.com