Animals feel effects of the looting

RESCUE and feral animals are feeling the pinch of last year’s looting.

Sandile Bele, whose enterprise, Rescue Animal Food, provides pet food to about 400 volunteers, first felt the pinch when his depot in Waterfall was ransacked and then when his resulting debts caught up with him.

Much of the stock stolen had been bought on credit.

Now, the 38-year-old’s delivery vehicle is beyond repair, his own car – which he used as a substitute – is also out of order, and his friend, whose vehicle he has been borrowing, needs it back.

“That’s understandable. He’s also self-employed,” Bele told the Independent on Saturday.

Colonies of cats, like the 15 that inhabit the parking lot of a business in Springfield, stand to lose as he battles to collect and deliver the animals’ sustenance.

Employee Thea Blignaut inherited the duty of feeding them after a colleague was retrenched. She pays Bele for the four bags of food he delivers every month from her own pocket.

“I couldn’t bear to see them die because of not getting food,” she said.

“It’s a very big responsibility, but I just feel I would rather go without food myself than let them go without food.

“If I one day leave here, I will get someone else to feed them because they are part of our lives, and they make us happy.”

Bele concurred: “Animals are precious. Sometimes you have a bad day, and when you come home, they will be happy to see you. They give you love. Even if you say ‘hamba’ (go away), they don’t hold grudges.

“I believe animals exist for a reason. In this day, many people have difficulties.

“They can’t love.”

He said his love for animals started in the KwaMashu home in which he grew up.

“My dad would buy chicken, and before anyone ate it, he would give pieces to his dogs. We would eat after that. I learned to love animals from home.”

Growing up in the township in the 1980s and 1990s, he witnessed political violence and crime.

“If you are born and you grow up in townships, you have two choices in life: to do good or to do bad.

“Either you do crime to survive, or you do good and continue to push until something good happens.

“When you do good to one person, that person will go and do good to another and the good will spread.”

Bele also distributes food parcels and second-hand clothes to the needy.

Anyone who can help Bele with donations or transport can contact him on 081 573 5111.