18/02/2026
NEO APARTHEID ON THE CAPE PENINSULA - WHAT THE BABOON CRISIS REVEALS ABOUT POWER, EXCLUSION AND ETHICAL FAILURE
READ the article written by Dr Adam Cruise
and
the right of reply from the City of Cape Town
We have asked Dr Cruise to comment on the response from the City of Cape Town.
Please do read below.
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2026-02-17-cape-peninsulas-neoapartheid-what-the-baat-the-baboon-crisis-reveals-about-power/
Dr Adam Cruise’s Official Response
to the City of Cape Town
Democratic Alliance:
1. On the Core Thesis
My article argued that baboon governance on the Peninsula exposes enduring spatial inequality and power imbalances rooted in apartheid geography. It framed wildlife management as political — shaped by who holds influence, who defines “nuisance,” and whose discomfort drives policy.
The City of Cape Town does NOT contest this thesis. They do NOT argue that spatial inequality is irrelevant. They do NOT demonstrate that decision-making structures are equitable. Instead, they reframes the discussion around personal frustrations of coexistence.
Reframing is not rebuttal.
2. On Evidence
The structural argument of my article drew on history, planning logic, and governance dynamics. The City of Cape Town’s response relies primarily on personal experience: hopes raised, hopes dashed, daily disruption endured.
Personal narrative does not, however, invalidate structural analysis. If coexistence proves difficult in practice, that difficulty must still be situated within policy choices and inherited geography. The absence of engagement with those dimensions leaves the central critique untouched.
3. On Inevitability
The City of Cape Town implies that peaceful coexistence was an admirable but unrealistic and a naive aspiration. This framing naturalises current management outcomes as inevitable.
But wildlife policy is not an act of nature. Lethal control, aggressive deterrence, and boundary enforcement are decisions made within political systems.
To present them as pragmatic necessities without interrogating who benefits and who decides is to remove accountability from the discussion.
4. On Whose Burden Counts
My article asked a fundamental question: whose inconvenience triggers state intervention? In a city still defined by apartheid-era spatial privilege, complaints from affluent suburbs bordering protected areas carry disproportionate political weight.
The City of Cape Town’s response centres suburban frustration but does not address whether that frustration is structurally amplified in governance processes. Without that analysis, their position implicitly reinforces the status quo rather than examining it.
5. On the Political Nature of “Management”
By narrowing the debate to whether coexistence works in daily life, the City of Cape Town treats wildlife management as technical rather than political. Yet management strategies are shaped by funding priorities, property values, tourism interests, and electoral sensitivities.
Ignoring these factors does not neutralise them. It obscures them.
6. On What Was Not Addressed
Crucially, the City of Cape Town does not demonstrate that baboon policy is insulated from historical patterns of exclusion. They do not provide evidence that all communities affected by baboon governance have equal influence.
They do not contest the claim that the Peninsula’s geography shapes present conflict.
Without engaging these claims directly, their article remains a reflection, not a refutation.
The debate is not about whether baboons can be inconvenient. The debate is about whether that inconvenience justifies policy shaped primarily by the preferences of those with the loudest voices and the greatest access to power.
Difficulty does not dissolve structural critique. Frustration does not substitute for analysis. And coexistence being hard does not make governance neutral.
If the structural argument is wrong, it deserves a direct counterargument grounded in evidence and political analysis. Until then, describing dashed hopes does not meaningfully answer the charge that the Peninsula’s baboon crisis reveals something larger about how power still operates in post-apartheid South Africa.
