Activist’s extreme acts for animals’ right to life
PRETORIA animal rights activist Herman H le Roux has gone without food to raise funds to feed hungry animals.
But that is not all. To demonstrate his passion for animal rights‚ Le Roux has gone as far as getting himself marked‚ live on social media‚ with the number 269‚ using a red-hot iron rod on his back to experience first-hand the pain felt by livestock during the branding process.
The significance of the number 269 was that it was the number of a calf rescued from slaughter at an Israeli dairy farm. The calf is still alive today‚ thanks to a campaign by animal rights activists all over the world.
“The number 269 has since become a symbol of animal rights worldwide,” Le Roux said.
“I cannot speak with authority on something that I have not experienced. “I [had] no experience of how it felt to be branded‚ but now I can say how painful it is.”
He is also in the process of forming a political party that will campaign strictly on animal rights‚ saying everybody had their rights entrenched post-1994 but animals’ rights were never taken into consideration.
Pale‚ visibly weak and hungry, the 45-year-old said that when he started his hunger strike on December 4‚ his target was to raise R20 000 in 20 days.
However‚ there has been such good response that he has raised the bar to R60 000, after he reached double his target within days.
Le Roux said that when he breaks his fast on Saturday‚ he would announce details of how the funds would be distributed to animal shelters in Pretoria‚ Johannesburg and KwaZulu-Natal.