Flesh versus steel is no contest for horses on the street
● When Beauty arrived for surgery at 4pm on Saturday, wrapped in cloth and drenched in blood, it was an emergency.
She had been carrying children to the beach in Mitchells Plain when a car rammed into her.
In that moment and the hours that followed, her journey became a microcosm for Cape Town’s working horses: the dangers they face from motorists, the life-saving goodwill of humans, and the balancing act of the human right to earn a living while an animal does the heavy lifting.
Marike Kotze, who works at the Cart Horse Protection Association, said motorists were the biggest threat to working horses. “People don’t really understand that a horse pulling a cart cannot stop or take off at a traffic light as quickly as a car can,” she said.
Other common problems include “overloading of horses pulling scrap metal, ill-fitting harnesses and shoes, wire and twine used on harnesses, and only occasionally these days skinny horses who are underfed”.
However, many “carties” cared for their horses properly and brought them in every day for affordable food and new shoes.
There are 270 registered working horses in Cape Town. The association has three farriers and four inspectors.
There is also one official who is registered with the City of Cape Town as a law enforcer and can give out fines and confiscate horses in extreme situations.
Dr Lezanne Gunter, who operated on Beauty, said: “The kids and people who were with her had tied all their jackets around her leg and chest in an effort to stop the bleeding. This probably saved her life as they were soaked in blood when we removed [them]. A large flap of skin and muscle were visible and the wound was also very deep.”
This week, the association launched a fundraising campaign named after a horse called Amber, which was pulling a cart when the dead body of a dog scared her and she stepped over the line in the centre of the road. “A truck came along and smashed into her and she had to be put down,” said Kotze.
Adrian Sedras, 23, a cartie from Valhalla Park, kept a beady eye on his horse Nikita this week as cars whizzed by on a main road near a scrap yard. His cart was loaded with an old fridge and a mattress.
“Sometimes there isn’t enough work, but we look all the time for it — carrying scrap metal to the yard, lifting people to a birthday party . . . we have to put bread on the table for our kids,” he said.
According to research published recently in PLOS One, in low- and middle-income countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America up to 70% of horse welfare problems were considered “hard wins”.
Challenges included “no economic or social benefit from caring for working animals, poor resources, lack of empathy for the horses and their owners among wider stakeholders, social issues like addiction or illegal working, and lack of community co-operation and safety issues”.