An Inspector at the Cape of Good Hope SPCA got a groot skrik when he responded to a complaint and found an abused tortoise chained to a pole on 5 December in Nomzamo informal settlement in Strand.
Inspector Lwazi Ntungele followed up on a complaint about an animal that was chained up and denied access to water and shelter.
Ntungele says: “Entering the dusty yard, I was looking around for a dog but immediately saw this very large tortoise tethered on a short rope that was tied around a pole.
“There was some sort of container nearby with nothing in it but algal growth, I assume that was once its water bowl.”
He says there wasn’t even a blade of grass for the skilpad to nibble on in the dusty yard.
The tortoise’s shelter was an old table placed on its side with a piece of cardboard for a roof.
Ntungele says: “I asked him [the owner] why he even had a tortoise in the first place. He claimed that the tortoise walked up to his front door one day and that was a sign for him to keep it as a pet.”
The tortoise was removed from the property and the owner was issued with a formal warning.
Jon Friedman, a supervisor at the SPCA’s Wildlife Department, says they remove dozens of tortoises from residential properties each week.
Friedman says: “Rescued from situations where they are kept either chained up in people’s yards, slowly dismembered for body parts to be used as ingredients in traditional medicine recipes or to be kept as pets.”