Splitting horse hairs
I would like to commend Judy Gilmour on her interesting article on Namibia “Hot, windy and wonderful” ( FM Life June 9-15).
At the risk of splitting hairs, it is worth pointing out that the “wild” horses of Garub are in fact feral. These horses were once domesticated as opposed to being truly wild.
In 1915 the German colonial “airforce” bombed Louis Botha’s horse enclosure in Garub, on the fringe of the Namib desert.
This resulted in nearly all of the 1,700 horses breaking free from the enclosure and escaping into the surrounding desert.
Recent genotyping has verified that the bloodline of the Garub horses is principally that of Arabian horses, many of which were used as military horses during Botha’s World War 1 campaign.
Also, Gilmour says there was a “floodlit watering hole that attracted a range of buck and some thirsty rhino”. The term “buck” usually relates to the smaller species of antelope, such as springbok. Since there would probably have been gemsbok or oryx at the watering hole, perhaps the term antelope would have been more appropriate. chases, only to then fight their way through a bottleneck of shoppers waiting to exit.
Two issues stand out in my mind. The first is that the retailers who practise this make the assumption that the customer is a criminal unless their purchase is validated, placing the onus on the customer to prove that they have not shoplifted items.
Secondly, there is a racist premise in this activity, in that the practice is mostly prevalent in retailers serving middle to lowerincome customers. It should not be so.
That this constitutes racism is proven by a couple of examples. A Fruit & Veg corporate retailer in Springfield Park posts guards at their door for checking till slips, while the same corporate entity in the upmarket La Lucia Mall does no such thing. The same applies to a particular Massmart retailer in City View Shopping Centre near central Durban; the same brand stores in the Gateway and Pavilion Malls do not.
Retailers and their customers need to decide whether the customer is king or criminal. Until this matter is settled legislatively, I call on people of this country to resist this nonsense. Present the till slip only if you are being accused of shoplifting. You have rights. Use them.