Transforming Animal Protection Legislation

South Africa is one of the most diverse countries in the world – both in terms of its human population, as well as its population of species, or biodiversity. In 2024, as we celebrate 30 years of democracy, we recognise that while significant strides have been made to pursue social justice for humans, our fellow animals have been left behind.

In 2016, the Constitutional Court of South Africa recognised animal welfare as a fundamental principle of the Constitution. They acknowledged the sentience of animals and the importance of their protection, explicitly stating that “animal welfare has shifted from merely safeguarding the moral status of humans to placing intrinsic value on animals as individuals” The Court further stated that “our courts now afford increasingly robust protection to animal welfare”.

However, there have been minimal subsequent developments in the law to reflect this ethos. The South African Government, through the department of Agriculture, land Reform and Rural Development has expressed the intention to overhaul the current regulatory reguime for the protection of animals through the drafting of a new “Animal Welfare Bill”. The impetus for the Bill was a recent Socio-Economic Impact Assessment Study (SEIAS, 2018). The SEIAS study frames the protection of animals in terms that are purely instrumental for human benefits.

With the intention of developing a contemporary Animal Welfare Bill, which is aligned with the new constitutional dispensation, the judiciary’s legitimate recognition of this constitutional ethos for animals, Animal Law Reform South Africa (ALRSA), HSI-Africa and SAIFAC (a centre of the University of Johannesburg), initiated the ‘Animal Law Project’ to create a platform for the animal protection sector to provide feedback on realities and challenges of the current governance regime, and to offer inputs as to what they might expect from such revised legislation.