Cape Town - The Animal Welfare Society of South Africa has sounded the alarm on the improper usage of cart horses.
“It is a huge concern and we have noticed an increase in the number of incidences, especially in the vicinity of Jakes Gerwel Drive where there appears to be a proliferation of unregistered cart horse operators,” said Allan Perrins, spokesperson for the Animal Welfare Society of South Africa.
He suggested that the problem be addressed by better enforcement of the by-laws that speak specifically to working equines and more proactive interventions.
Cart Horse Protection Association’s spokesperson Marike Kotze said there are 164 registered working horses at the moment. There are an additional 115 that are registered as working horses, but are currently too young to work. That means they are not three years yet.
Until 2014 any horse from anywhere could be registered, but in 2014 Cart Horse Protection Association closed registration, due to financial constraints – because they offer so many subsidised services, they try and keep the number of horses limited.
“Also, there is limited scrap available for the guys to collect and sell. So now, only a foal born to a registered mare can be registered as a working horse on our books. We don’t have any idea exactly how many unregistered horses are used to work, but we know that there are unregistered horses working. As you can imagine, this is a huge problem for us. Despite there being legislation in the city by-laws that horses have to be registered and have a permit to work, this can only be enforced by Law Enforcement, and not by us. We work under the auspices of the Animals Protection Act, so if we do get a complaint about a horse, we can only do something if we can prove abuse or neglect,” said Kotze.
Last month they confiscated two horses and both of them were unregistered.
“We confiscated them because they were thin and one had very bad shoes,” added Kotze.
Chief inspector for Cape Of Good Hope SPCA Jaco Pieterse said they have dealt with seven complaints about cart horses being overloaded in the last few months alone.
The City of Cape Town’s animal by-laws indicate that no person putting to work a working animal shall permit the working animal to be in any public place while being incapable of pulling an animal-drawn vehicle, suffering from injury or disease, or is otherwise unfit or unsuited to the intended work or permit the working animal to constitute a hazard to traffic using any public street or road.