The real zoo city

I live just down the road from the Joburg Zoo. Close enough that on quiet nights you can sometimes hear the lions roar. At first the thought of lions caged-up in the city seemed sad; now I’m not so sure how I feel. Perhaps it’s because I like the thought of the pandemonium that would break out if the animals were to escape, but more likely it’s because I’ve come to realise how similar we are to zoo animals.

South Africans are renowned for the extent to which we have walled ourselves off from others. Just like the lions are kept separate from tigers and zebras, so South Africans have also walled up, electrified, and razor wired the divisions between different “animals”. Although many of the apartheid-era enclosures have been officially dismantled, in many ways they persist. The Constitution says all animals are equal, but as we know, some animals are more equal than others.

But I think it’s the more subtle similarities that are more interesting and revealing.

A common response when someone points out the cruelty of keeping animals in a zoo is that the animals “know no better”. They were born in the zoo, and have never experienced life outside of it. They have no concept of the open plains; true freedom would be a very frightening thing for zoo animals. I find it quite amusing how easily this logic applies to us, too.

Thomas Hobbes famously wrote of the social contract, a hypothetical agreement humans made to move from a state of chaos and anarchy, into one of calm and order. For Hobbes, life before the zoo was a dangerous, threatened existence. Life in the zoo is safer, more structured, and functional. Where could an animal possibly be safer than in a zoo?

The point is that now humans know no better than life in our zoo. We were born into a world split up into countries, where passports are needed to cross borders. We have no concept of life outside of this social arrangement, though like zoo animals in their mock grassland enclosures, we like to be reminded of what life is like outside the zoo. We go on retreats and getaways. Some try to “get back to their roots”, but in reality we have no idea what this would mean. What would human life be like outside of society and the state? We know no better than the zoo.

For some the difference between us and zoo animals is that we have a choice. Zoo animals are stuck in a particular area; we can roam freely (well some more than others, but the idea is there). To a greater or lesser extent, we can choose what to eat, and when; what to wear; who to be with and where we want to live.

I’m not sure though if that’s “choice”, or simply picking from a pre-defined range of choices.

We have no choice about living in the zoo or not. Passports, ID books, proof of residence, credit cards, bank accounts and bonds — it’s very difficult to live without these things, and living with them steadily enmeshes one into the zoo more and more.

We don’t really have unrestricted freedom of movement either. And the food we “choose” to eat has been preselected on the basis of how profitable it is, how well it lasts, how easily it can be packed, transported and popped onto shelves. We have little say in what chemicals get used on our foods, or where it comes from, or how it’s packaged. We are just like the lions.

You have very little choice about wearing clothes or not. There’s also not much you can really do about the type of work you do, or if you want to work at all! Even choices about what we put in, or do to, our own bodies are restricted. The terminally ill can’t choose to die.

While we lament how caged up and tied down the lions are, we seldom realise how similar our position is to theirs.

Luckily for most people, this isn’t an issue. They happen to quite like life in the zoo. It’s worked out pretty well for them, and they actively pursue ways to zoo-ify their lives more and more. They live in gated communities, behind fences that cut, and drive to work in little boxes too. And yet ironically it is often these people who cherish the idea of “freedom” most. Their city-bound Freelanders are said to be the pinnacle of freedom, and shopping the maze of malls every weekend is truly liberating they say. Within the walls of consumerism we can find freedom.

No, this is the real zoo. Welcome.

By the way, if you haven’t read Zoo City by Lauren Beukes, you really should. Awesome read.