The Faroe Islands, a self governing region of Denmark situated Northwest of Scotland and halfway between Iceland and Norway, has been described by the National Geographic as 'unspoilt, a delight to the traveller.' The islands earned high marks for preservation of nature, historic architecture and local pride.
But this deceptively peaceful destination has an ugly side. For a thousand years there would be the annual 'grind' during which a flotilla of small boats drives whales or dolphins into a shallow bay where they can be easily killed with knives. This archaic tradition was also practiced by other cultures in the Arctic and Europe, but these have either stopped or changed their techniques considerably.
Recently, South Africa woke up to the news that six animal activists had been arrested at the Faroe islands on charges of hindering the hunt of the pilot whales and not following police orders when being asked to leave the water.
Two of those arrested were South Africans and Bolander interviewed one of them, Nikki Botha.
So who is this dedicated animal activist and what made her follow this journey?
According to Nikki she had a pretty unstable childhood, being placed in boarding school from an early age, first in Touwsrivier and then at the Bloemhof Girls' High in Stellenbosch.
She became aware of the cruel fate of animals from her activist mother and after leaving school and relocating to Cape Town, she became a vegetarian, moving on to veganism after 18 years.
But what really started her off on her 'animal' journey was when in 2006 a friend introduced her to Captain Alex Cornelissen of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) whose boat, the Farley Mowatt, was being detained at Cape Town harbour "under the guise of red tape, but it was really at the behest of the Japanese government," she says.
The crew had no way out of the harbour and no food. In return for the latter, the captain would give her a tour of the boat. The crew were vegans and Nikki immediately went out and bought two trolley fulls of vegan food.
The tour of the boat included Cornelissen telling them about sealing and whaling and all the other atrocities perpetrated against the oceans. Nikki's Damascus moment was the point when he described how he stood ankle deep in seal blood on the ice floes of Canada. She had finally found her purpose.
She realized there was no way she could go home and pretend what she had learnt was not real. "I needed to do something. I had never been involved in activism and knew nothing about it. So I went home and internetted the hell out of the topic and at the end of the day I knew I had found my calling."
She sent an email to Francois Hugo of the local organization Seal alert (Bolander The Seal Whisperers 3 August 2011) then joined up with Francois and was his spokesperson for 3 years.
One thing led to another. Nikki decided to become politically active for animals. In order to understand how laws were made and passed, one needed to understand the politics and the decision makers behind it. So she joined up with the DA and was constituency secretary for the Cape Town CBD ward.
The incident where a DA Councillor violated the Animal Protection act and received a "slap on the wrist for bringing the party's name into disrepute" upset Nikki. "It became clear that animal welfare wasn't high on the agenda and I often sat in meetings and had to bite my tongue when activists were denigrated and ridiculed. When the DA decided to implement an archaic, racist law which would pass as an animal welfare by-law, I put my foot down. I was in a ward meeting and was told straight out by the chairperson that the DA would rather lose the vote of animal lovers than lose a Councillor. I wasn't towing the party line and I wasn't willing to sacrifice my ethics, morals and principles." So she resigned – very publicly.
Meanwhile, Nikki had got involved with the local chapter of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society of which she currently shares the running, together with two other ladies.
She has joined the SSCS in several campaigns, in Taiji as a Cove Guardian (a subsequent film The Cove won several international awards. Nikki considers this to be her most rewarding mission.)
She was also part of Operation Desert Seal in Namibia where they covertly filmed the cruel seal slaughter, escaping at night with their equipment in a dramatic chase through the desert, pursued by the Namibian authorities who listed them as "a threat to national security" and banned them from entering Namibia ever again.
And then there was their operation Sunu Gaal, which is their anti-poaching patrol on the West Coast of Africa. It is operated from a vessel called the Jairo Mora Sandoval, named in honour of a young South American turtle activist who was murdered by poachers.
Their latest campaign was as part of Operation Grindstop 2014 in the Faroe Islands where she and her five team mates were arrested for interfering with the inhumane grind. They were fined kr1000 each (which they refuse to pay) and banned from the Faroe Islands for one year.
I asked Nikki about their stay in jail and the subsequent court case, which must have been harrowing. She shrugged her shoulders and replied that for her a visit to the dentist was worse.
But it is clear that despite their fighting with everything they had to save those whales, the harrowing experience of watching entire pods, babies included, being butchered left emotional scars with which they are still battling to come to terms. "We might have been on trial for allegedly breaking the law, but the Faroe Islands are on trial and the world needs to find them guilty. No decent person could ever condone the complete and utterly abhorrent way those animals were treated and butchered."
Nikki's main focus now is lobbying for change within a constitutional framework. As such she no longer considers herself to be an animal rights activist, she says, but rather a civil society activist: "Because no civil society treats animals the way we do."
In this she is supported by her husband "my dream man who loves me unconditionally and supports me in everything that I do."
Beatrice Wiltshire
