Domestic worker savagely mauled in pit bull attack

Slindile Bhengu, a domestic worker, was viciously attacked by three dogs – one of which was a pit bull – on her daily route to work in Seatides last week.

The attack left her with severe injuries to her legs and upper body, and she is now worried about how her children, aged four and 10, will survive while she is unable to work. Bhengu was saved by a passing motorist who hooted at the dogs, but no one else came to her aid.

The 33-year-old uses the road to and from work from the informal settlement she lives in next to Seatides.

“The dogs always bark at people walking past and sometimes the owner will come out and call them to order,” Bhengu told the Courier from her hospital bed at Dr Pixley Ka Isaka Seme Memorial Hospital in KwaMashu.

“However, on Tuesday when I saw the dogs running towards me from the house, I paid little attention as I thought the gate was closed as usual. By the time I realised that the dogs had got out of the property, it was too late.

“I felt the first bite on my leg and tried to chase them away with my bag.

I was screaming my lungs out, but no one came to help me.”

Bhengu said that even the motorist who hooted at the dogs to chase them off drove away as soon as he or she realised she had managed to escape.

“I do not blame that person because he or she was obviously too terrified to get out of the car. But if that car did not stop, we would be talking a different story by now,” said Bhengu, who will undergo surgery this week.

The domestic worker was not sure when she would be able to walk or work again.

“My children and their grandmother rely on my salary,” she said.

Dog owner Sanden Maharaj, said one of the three dogs was his, a one-year-old pit bull.

“I don’t know who the other two dogs belong to as I was not home at the time,” said Maharaj.

The day after the attack he went to the hospital with Bhengu’s sister but he was not allowed to see her, because he is not a direct family member.

Maharaj committed to looking after her children’s need while she was not working.

“As a dog owner, I am very sad about what happened and I will not be running away from this incident. I will support her in anything that she and her kids needs, while she is still injured. I have taken the dog to my relative who stays on a farm in KwaDukuza,” he said.

eThekwini district police spokesperson, Captain Carmen Rhynes, said a case had been opened at the Tongaat police under the animal matters amendment Act – “Negligently allowing or failing to prevent an animal to cause injury to another person”.

She said municipal by-law and regulations determine that all dog owners have to ensure their dogs are kept safe within their properties at all times.

In March a petition started last year by the Sizwe Kupelo Foundation to minister of agriculture, land reform and rural development Thoko Didiza to ban pit bulls as pets had garnered more than 139 000 signatures.

The petition was prompted by the death of 10-year-old Storm Nuku, killed by his family’s pit bulls in Gqeberha, in September last year.

The call to ban pit bulls in South Africa comes as other countries including Russia, Finland, Denmark, United Kingdom, Portugal and parts of Germany, China, Brazil and Australia, have either banned or put restrictions on ownership of the breed or its importation.

But pit bull defenders believe backyard breeders, and owners who do not train or socialise the dogs, are to blame for creating aggressive crossbreeds that attack humans.

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