JONATHAN JANSEN: A live cow is hacked apart. Our social fabric tears at the seams
The shaky video recording available on internet sites is the most wretched thing any human being could possibly watch. A terrified cow is seen galloping for its life across open spaces in the rural university town of Alice in the Eastern Cape. In pursuit is a lively group of students fresh from a protest about the alleged nonpayment of financial aid. The final frame in the video shows the bloodied remains of the animal.
After failing to access the local dairy farm to kill the calves — which were hastily spirited away — the group herded some villager’s cows into the town. What happened next could have been taken straight from a horror movie. The students hunted down two cows and hacked portions of flesh from the live animals, which they took to their residences to consume. On my phone is an image of a female student running off with the badly butchered leg of one of the cows. On the day, the police would not allow the SPCA officer from King William’s Town to access the volatile...
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