RAVE: Circus Animals Thank Bolivia...and China

I remember being taken by my father to the Boswell Wilkie Circus here in Johannesburg as a young boy in the late 1970s (my mother refused to go along - she's always loathed circuses and zoos). I was excited by the big top, the lights, the music - I was a boy of nine and it was the CIRCUS!

GASP! How that boyish joy changed as the 'show' unfolded...

My excitement soon turned to a pit in my stomach that got larger and larger as the show wore on. I couldn't stand cheering and being 'entertained' by large, beautiful wild animals like elephants, lions and tigers, animals that I knew were meant to be free and in the wild, not tamed and belittled in front of people, turning tricks like poodles. They looked so unhappy, so out of it. I hated it. I knew it was wrong. And I vowed at that age to never again visit the circus. I never have.

The continued use of animals in circuses around the world is a source of SHAME for humanity.

If people were asked which country they believed would be the first in the world to ban all animals being used in circuses, I doubt very much that Bolivia would feature in many people's responses.

But so it is - Bolivia has become the first country in the world to ban all use of animals in circuses or for any means of entertainment.

If, as Mahatma Gandhi once said, the true mark of a society's spiritual enlightenment is how it treats its animals, then Bolivia has just become a far more enlightened nation.

But it gets better...

I was sent a link today (see it at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8266563/China-bans-animal-circuses.html) in which the Chinese governments has now also banned animals in circuses and, furthermore, has warned the nation's zoos that they too will now be under greater scrutiny as to how they treat their animals.

China?!

Yes, the China that built the ecological catastrophe that is the Three Gorges Dam, the China that is now the world's largest carbon emitter and contributor to global warming, the China that is hardly the darling of many environmental causes. Yes, that China.

And all power to them.

Bolivia and China setting the benchmark for how animals ought to be banned from being used in circuses - who would have thought?

Countries like the United States, France, Germany, Russia, United Kingdom, Sweden, Australia and South Africa lagging behind Bolivia and China on the issue of circus animals...hmmmmm...

I will take these types of blessings from wherever they may come. I'm quite sure the animals feel the same way.

Do you get my point?