I was initially attracted to the former lion enclosure on the UCT campus by its scale. It feels like something from a medieval horror movie that would contain a bizarre many-headed, snapping beast rather than a pride of lions.
Eventually though, I became interested by the idea that in order to create an enclosure to house lions countless wild animals would have been forced away from living on this land. Then for close to half a century lions were forced to live in an enclosure so cramped that every time a lioness gave birth the cubs had to be taken away so that she would not kill them. There is something I find fascinating about this circuitous and twisted logic.
