GOOD Statement by Brett Herron,
GOOD Secretary-General & Member of Western Cape Parliament
14 November 2026
GOOD calls on the City of Cape Town, CapeNature and SANParks to make public the permits, assessments, costs and reasons behind the capture of the Waterfall and Seaforth baboon troops. Capture began yesterday.
The troops are being moved to the Urban Wildlife Centre at Kogelfontein for permanent confinement. They have effectively been sentenced to life terms of imprisonment. If the authorities are unwilling to fund measures to sustain the baboons in their natural environment it would arguably be more humane to euthanise them.
The GOOD Party will table written questions to Western Cape MEC for Environmental Affairs Anton Wilhelm Bredell and Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis.
But these questions will be too late to stop the baboons’ suffering. The Cape of Good Hope SPCA confirmed that capture operations began on 13 November. It says it was only told on the evening of 12 November that a permit had been granted.
Two weeks ago, in response to a Promotion of Access to Information Act request, CapeNature confirmed that it had not yet received a completed permit application and that the operational management plan had not been finalised. We are informed that CapeNature repeated this in writing as recently as last week.
If the permit was properly applied for, assessed and granted, there is no reason to keep it secret. The public is entitled to see the permit, its conditions, the assessments it relied on and the reasons for the decision. That is especially true when the decision is permanent and irreversible for some 60 wild animals.
The City has apparently spent R10 million building the baboon prison facility and has committed to funding its operating costs for years to come. Ratepayers should be informed exactly what the facility cost, how the contracts were awarded, and what will happen to the animals when the funding ends.
GOOD also wants to know whether more humane options were properly considered before the troops were removed from the wild. Primatologist Dr David Gaynor, who has worked with Cape Peninsula baboon troops for decades, and the Wildlife and Animal Protection Forum of South Africa have proposed a strategic boundary fence for Simon’s Town, backed by secure waste management and monitoring.
The City is building just such a boundary fence from Zwaanswyk south to Constantia Nek, along the edge of Table Mountain National Park. Why, then, was Simon’s Town left out of the fencing option and rollout of baboon-proof bins?
We are not dismissing the real problems residents of Simon’s Town face. Break-ins, damage to property and fear for children and pets are real, and so is the danger the baboons face from cars, dogs and people.
Residents and baboons both need a lasting solution. But a lasting solution must be lawful, transparent, evidence-based and humane. We question whether less drastic options were properly considered before the most drastic one was chosen.
The proposed site also moved from Plateau Road to Kogelfontein without any new public participation process. More than 2,400 people made submissions through an independent Dear South Africa campaign, and more than 90% of them opposed the plan. Those submissions were delivered to the Cape Peninsula Baboon Management Joint Task Team. The public has yet to be told how they were considered.
GOOD seeks answers to the following questions:
- What permits were issued, by whom, when, and on what conditions;
- When was a complete application received, and how was it assessed;
- What animal welfare, veterinary and environmental assessments were done, and by whom;
- The full capital and operating cost of the facility, and how contracts were awarded;
- How the boundary fence and waste-management alternatives were assessed, and why they were rejected;
- Why there was no public participation on the Kogelfontein site;
- Whether further captures will be paused until these documents are made public.