MAVERICK CITIZEN: Friday Activist: Jenni Trethowan

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It’s been 30 years and still Jenni Trethowan is fighting for baboons and people to co-exist peacefully in Cape Town — and South Africa.

It’s an emotive issue with fierce supporters and detractors — a plethora of stakeholders often skirting responsibility as humans and baboons clash around Table Mountain. Key players include the City of Cape Town, its appointed baboon management agents, the Nature Conservation Corporation, CapeNature, the SPCA, the Western Cape government, Table Mountain National Park, South African National Parks and in some cases the South African Navy.

“I’ve always had huge empathy for animals and especially underdogs,” says Trethowan. “And that is why I find the baboon situation so distressing, because baboons are very much the underdog, considered as vermin and pests and problem animals, herded with paintball guns and killed.” “Nonsense,” says Trethowan. “Baboons are baboons, they’re doing their thing. Baboons don’t want to be human. They are not interested in being friends with us, or being friends with me, despite the fact that I worked damn hard for them for 30 years.”“It’s easy when I’m communicating to just say, for example, ‘George’. Some of the service providers and the scientists said we should give them codes. For example SK14. But how do you remember that? Is he 14, 15? No, he’s George.

“I can’t deny that they’ve become a problem in some areas — there are plenty of stories of baboons snatching sandwiches from tourists at Cape Point and raiding rubbish bins in Scarborough,” she says. “But I’m equally convinced that it’s up to us to find a human solution to the problem that humans have created.”

Sparky was released in 2008. Three years later Trethowan was heartbroken when authorities killed her for being a “raiding baboon”. Over the years Trethowan has featured in news reports around the world. Responding to a comment on her movie-star cheekbones, she shrugs: “Yes, people say I have a familiar face.”

 

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