You can’t pull the wool over the eyes of the Joburg metro cops.
Officers from the Joburg metro police department (JMPD) impounded a flock of seven sheep outside a Sandton business, and fined the business R2 000 for illegal trading.
The sheep were made of wire and beads, and were outside the Bang & Olufsen shop in Peter Place in Sandton to amuse staff and passersby.
They were decorations, argued the staff, but were met with what amounted to a “Bah”.
“They would have to pay a pound fee, to get them out of the pound,” said JMPD spokesman Wayne Minnaar.
B&O sales manager Mike Sharp said they had bought the wire and beadwork sheep from local craftsmen as a social responsibility gesture, and put them to “graze” on B&O’s grass verge each morning “to create both a unique B&O presence as well as a welcome respite for passing commuters”.
But city officials had a sense-of-humour failure.
A JMPD officer, who wished not to be named, seized the sheep and issued a R2 000 fine for “trading on a park or garden, where the public has a right of access”.
B&O sells luxury audio-visual equipment, not wire sheep. Sharp said if officers couldn’t understand the novelty purpose of the sheep, they could have asked, but did not.
“You can’t just put things outside for decoration… The goods probably were sold to the public,” said Sipho Dlepu, the head of by-law enforcement.
He said the officer had told him that “those artworks were taken away because at the particular spot where they were trading, trading is not allowed.”
Sharp said the B&O headquarters in Denmark are in an ultra-modern building in a pastoral setting, with real sheep around.
“We just thought it would be so quirky to try and replicate that. People really enjoy driving past and seeing what the sheep are up to,” Sharp said.
When the sheep were moved to different spots, B&O staff got e-mails asking why the sheep weren’t talking to each other; when they moved them back into a group, they got e-mails saying how nice it was that the sheep were friends again; when one was borrowed, they got e-mails asking where the baby sheep was; when they put scarves on them in winter, they got e-mails approving the attempts to keep them “warm”.
“We’re trying desperately to get them back,” said Sharp. “We’re looking at having a sheepdog made.” - The Star