Paper short abstract:

Caring for children in precarious urban contexts requires rats be 'exterminated.'This paper explores the complex human-animal interface, with ethnographic data drawn from the city if Cape Town where schools of thought around animal cruelty clash.

Paper long abstract:

This paper draws attention to the hidden perils of agricultural pesticides, which have been repurposed in urban South African townships by street sellers to kill rats and other unwanted urban 'pests'. We consider, in particular, the causal relationships between child poisoning episodes and the household use of these illegal street pesticides, which are used to protect children from the harmful consequences of rodent bites. This domestic instantiation of care is complexly bound up with the etiology of childhood poisonings. We follow competing models of care in the work of primary care givers, street sellers, poison specialists, and animal rights activists invested in saving rats from painful deaths. In tracing these uneven trajectories of care, especially in the light of state negligence, we highlight the layers of social injustice and economic inequality that contribute to child poisoning episodes in the absence of structural care. We raise questions related to the intersection of the city, human-animal relations, and the spike in childhood poisonings and demonstrate the entangled worlds of sanitation, waste removal, insecure housing, and the proliferation of rodents and other 'pests' in urban landscapes of the Western Cape. While immediate public health interventions for eliminating rats and household pests in non-toxic ways is critical, long-term approaches to care, namely social justice, will require environmental and human rights activism to address racist processes of dehumanization and forms of structural violence that underpin both human and animal suffering.