INTRODUCTION

There is a sure route to finding yourself a social pariah, alone in the kitchen at parties. For a time I was on this path when I became a militant, proselytising vegetarian after visiting the Johannesburg abattoir, then the largest one in the southern hemisphere. A group of first-year Sociology students had chosen the site for their mid-year ‘workplace visit’. The work involved killing 688 sheep and 120 cattle per hour.

It is hard to say which was worse, the smell of blood and fear, or the sight of the terrified, panic-stricken animals who had witnessed the fate of the animal ahead of them being stunned with a captive bolt pistol and then hoisted with chains onto an assembly line before having its throat cut. Abattoirs are one of those places hidden from public view where much of the pain and suffering inflicted on other animals takes place.

While the manager maintained that the killing took place in ‘the most humane and hygienic conditions possible’,1 this was not a happy place either for the animals or the 1 400 workers employed by the South African Abattoir Corporation at the time. The majority were white, according ‘to a traditional white labour preference policy’ and many of them looked strange. We were told that most were ‘descendants of poor whites’, many were barely literate and a number were ‘mentally retarded youths from special schools’. Wages were low, starting at ZAR 100 a week and rising to ZAR 400–500 a week for line foremen. According to the manager, there were many problems with the workers, including theft of meat and dagga smoking. This was clearly a workplace that brutalised people, coarsening their sensibilities.

ANIMAL RIGHTS

On this occasion, many of us were concerned with both the abattoir workers and the animals. This runs counter to the common assumption that being concerned with cruelty to animals or supporting animal rights implies an indifference to humans. Two South African human rights organisations, People Opposing Women Abuse (POWA) and the Black Sash promoted this view in 1999 when they made use of a controversy about the treatment of captured elephant calves to gain public support for themselves and to castigate the animal rights position. POWA ran a television advertisement that claimed that most people care more for abused animals than for abused women.