It all started with a community hero who wanted to help his neighbours pets. Mr Joe from Khayelitsha pushed a trolley and water bucket around the community, bathing and feeding community pets. He soon attracted volunteers to assist him. 

 

A long standing volunteer was able to secure funding to assist this man in his animal saving efforts. Overwhelmed by the funding, he decided to hand the project over to this volunteer who grew the Mdzananda Animal Clinic and became the full time Project Manager up until May 2015 when a new manager joined Mdzananda. Mr Joe,  who is now elderly, lived down the road and visits on a continious basis. He helps with education, finding homeless pets new homes and has planted a vegetable garden on the premisis to show community members how much can be done with a small space. 

 

Highly respected and supported by the Khayelitsha community, the Mdzananda Animal Clinic was founded in 1996 in response to the need to provide primary veterinary healthcare services to a fast growing community that had no access to help for their animals. It is a permanent, non profit, veterinary council registered animal hospital serving up to 1000 pets per month. 

 

Initially Mdzananda worked from a single donated shipping container with no running water or electricity. Today, thanks to the support of our donors, Mdzananda is a fully functioning animal haven running 6 days a week.

 

Mdzananda means mange in the local isiXhosa dialect - a skin disease. Mr Joe called it the "mange clinic" as there were so many animals suffering from mange when he started his animal saving efforts. We also like the fact that "ananda" means extreme happiness in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.