When nothing changes

Seven days after going missing, young Tessa returned home on Sunday to the relief of an entire St Joseph community. A “mixed breed” black and brown dog, wearing a pink collar, her situation was the single most discussed issue on the neighbourhood WhatsApp group for a very long time – including ongoing discourses on crime.

Maybe it’s the algorithms or sheer coincidence, but I also cannot remember as many missing animal reports as were recorded since … you know when. One unfortunate character was arguing on social media that the noise and mayhem were an important part of religious observance. Don’t huff and puff, I’ve heard other denominations with the same talk.

In a community that experiences frequent encounters with non-domestic animals – birds, squirrels, parrots, manicous, iguanas and others, it could not have been roaming hunters alone responsible for their sudden absence for about a week.

In a few weeks from now, we are bracing for the same assaults – long established to be harmful to humans and our natural environment. Then, for yet another 12 months, leaders of politics, religion, business, together with numerous everyday citizens will be declaring: “leave dem nah”.

The fact is, not one single government has been prepared to do what is needed to address the problem – Noise Pollution Rules and Summary Offences Act notwithstanding. “Zero tolerance” thus remains among the more hollow official declarations.

Yes, I will be the sourpuss to keep at this. For, I do not subscribe to the preservation of any ancient or longstanding cultural or other practice that is provably harmful. We have already discussed this in instances of child marriage, corporal punishment, and vigilante justice, among others.

But where else is the dissent? Environmental groups, animal rights activists, and a few stragglers with access to public platforms say the same things at least three times a year. The typical response elevates such practices to approvable cultural practice and tradition.

Where are the politicians invoking regulation and enforcement? The business leaders urging moderation, even in pursuit of profits? Religious leaders preaching a duty of care? The police doing their duty? And community leaders helping people understand the potential for damage and injury.

True, it may well be that a referendum on continued breaches of law and civilized behaviour will fail on the basis of notions of cultural value. So, until this changes, every single year, on more than one occasion, we will hear the complaints of the ill and aged affected by the noise and smoke, and there will be the ritualistic posting of photos of lost pets spooked by the mayhem, and natural flora and fauna cynically disturbed and destroyed. Nothing will change.

Not long from now, mere weeks away, the posters identifying missing animals will go up again around our neighbourhoods, somebody will require more medication or attention for burns, maybe a house of two will be damaged or destroyed by fire, and the letters to the newspapers and radio talk shows calling for more considerate citizens will be in abundance.

Then we won’t have to wait too long for the assurance that something will be done about the situation. We know the drill. A Cabinet item, public consultations, “zero tolerance” etc etc.

Some of us have been around long enough to have heard all of this numerous times from politicians, police commissioners and everyone in-between.

Maybe this will earn mention at forthcoming “crime talks” of the various varieties currently on the table, once the main actors drop the political grandstanding.

At times like these, colleague journalists ought to be busy checking with the various magistrates’ courts on the vast amounts being transferred into government coffers as a result of fines derived from application of the law - $1,000 under Chapter 11:02 and $1,500 under Section 70 of the Summary Offences Act.

Everywhere, in full view of politicians of national and local status, the police, religious leaders, respectable business people, academics, professionals, and lesser mortals such as journalists we could have run informal tallies. In my area alone, the national coffers could have benefitted in the tens of thousands. Some people kept count – but more in order to calculate the cost of idiocy.

I can imagine the ensuing Cabinet discussions. The minister of social development congratulating the minister of national security, the prime minister congratulating the minister of finance.

We can at least dream on – provided we are given the opportunity to sleep of course.