Johannesburg — HUMANKIND is part of nature. This is what we tend to forget when we engage in acts of destruction such as the devastation of rain forests, the choking of our atmosphere with carbon dioxide and the annihilation of animal and plant species.

When I discussed this with a friend, he made the point that humans are predators and said that one of the reasons there is an imbalance in the global ecosystem is the fact that human beings as predators outnumber the prey. The implications are scary . It seems we are intent on consuming ourselves out of existence in pursuit of progress.

The irony is that we accumulate wealth and buy insurance policies that are intended to secure the future of our children and grandchildren without considering that they might not have a planet on which to spend this inheritance.

This, however, is not the most frightening thing my friend and I discussed. We went as far as talking about the fact that the sun, as a star , will one day cease to exist and everything that is now warmed and illuminated by its mighty presence will freeze and die .

You probably think these thoughts were sparked by debates on climate change, but they were not. They were triggered by the fate awaiting the bull that will be picked to propitiate a higher power and, through the manner of its killing, test the sinews of young warriors.

You must have heard by now that the Zulu king will be hosting the festival of harvests. During this religious ceremony, the nation thanks God and the ancestors for the harvest and prays that nothing bad befalls that which has not been harvested yet.

As part of the ceremony, a group of young men must send a bull to its ancestors with their bare hands. For the bull, this must be a journey of unimaginable pain and torture.

Predictably, opinion is divided between animal rights activists and those who see their objections as an attack on Zulu and African culture.

The debate about whether the bull should meet its maker in a way that is as unacceptable as the manner in which bulls are taunted and killed by matadors in Spain has attracted its fair share of racists and cultural chauvinists.

The racists, who still labour under the illusion that they are representatives of a superior culture, see in this act evidence that black people are uncivilised.

Unfortunately, in opposing the torture of an animal, one finds oneself on the same side of the fence as these unreconstructed bigots.

The cultural chauvinists, on the other hand, brook no alternative view in the belief that those who are not of the culture in whose name the bull will be slaughtered have no right to express opposition to this cultural practice.

The positions of both the racists and chauvinists are untenable. The experiences of and views from other cultures can have an enriching effect on our own culture if we accept the idea of a common humanity and reject the notion that belonging to a particular racial group confers a superior status upon you. The idea of a common humanity demands forms of intercultural and intracultural interaction that have, as their only goal, the betterment of the lot of all of humankind.

But human solidarity without a connection to nature robs us of the understanding that human beings are the keepers of plant and animal life.

Since it is argued by some religions that we have dominion over nature, there is a need to extend this conception of our position to include the fact that, as part of nature, we must have dominion over our destructive tendencies too. It is not enough to declare that umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye abantu (our humanity is derived from the humanity of others).

Our humanity is incomplete if there is no sense of solidarity with the rest of nature. This dictates that we take from nature only what we need for our survival and nothing more. The gratuitous and inhumane killing of animals for whatever reason desensitises us to, and disconnects us from, nature. If this continues, humankind is on an inexorable path to oblivion.

Matshiqi is a senior research associate at the Centre for Policy Studies.