Rocky and Rani — the German Shepherds who have taken TikTok by the collar and still sit like junior counsel.
JASA is, it must be said out loud, insanely fond of dogs. And of cats, horses, donkeys, the backyard rooster who has a better sense of time than a recording machine, and every other animal that cannot brief an attorney. This Alliance exists for magistrates. It also exists for the living things that arrive in a Magistrates’ Court only when someone has been cruel. A newsletter that is allowed to be human is allowed to wag.
Two of those living things have gone properly viral. Rocky and Rani, German Shepherds trained and loved in the Naidoo household, have become TikTok familiars — ties on, ears up, the sort of composure a Monday roll can only envy. Look them up under Rocky and Rani (the account rockyjusty — rocky & rani). They have been posting for years. They have the
followers. More usefully for this page, they have been sending magistrates the one thing a heavy week sometimes needs: a clip that reminds you the Republic still has a sense of humour, and that loyalty is not only a human virtue.
A special thank you — Mr J Naidoo
This page belongs, with thanks, to Mr J Naidoo — the voice of the voiceless in his own house and on a platform that most judicial officers still pretend they do not watch at lunch. He has trained, filmed and advocated with Rocky and Rani until the country knows their names. He has used that reach for animals who will never trend. JASA thanks him. The dogs may keep the ties.
What a magistrate actually sits with
Fun is not a substitute for the statute. Cruelty to animals is a criminal offence under the Animals Protection Act 71 of 1962. Section 2 is the charge sheet: beating, kicking, torturing, overloading, starving, denying water, leaving an animal in a filthy or parasite-ridden state, failing to get veterinary help when you can. A conviction carries a fine, or imprisonment of up to twelve months, or both. A court may also declare a person unfit to own an animal. Those sentences are not a cartoon. They are how a district court tells a community that a dog is not a thing.
Section 8 is why this page is in a magistrates’ newsletter at all. An SPCA officer authorised in writing by a magistrate may enter, arrest and seize. Warrants in animal cases come off the same blotter as search warrants in any other matter. The NSPCA is a statutory body under the Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 169 of 1993. In NSPCA v Minister of Justice 2016 (4) BCLR 517 (CC) the Constitutional Court confirmed that the NSPCA may institute a private prosecution where the State will not. A magistrate who treats an animal docket as “only a dog” has left the Act on the floor.
How to sit with an animal on the roll
Read section 2 before you read the mood of the gallery. Ask for the veterinary report. Ask whether a seizure warrant was properly authorised. Consider a declaration that the accused is unfit to own an animal. Costs and conditions of ownership are not softness. They are the remedy the statute already wrote. If the NSPCA is in your court, they are not a nuisance. They are a prosecutor the Constitution has already recognised.
JASA’s position is simple enough to pin next to the tea-break cartoon. We advocate against cruelty to animals. We expect our members to apply the Animals Protection Act with the same care they apply to a protection order. We are for magistrates, and we are for the animals who cannot stand up when their names are called. Watch Rocky and Rani. Then go back to the roll. The two things are not a contradiction.