[The Conversation Africa] Dogs are political. Their very existence in modern cities has goaded those in power into trying to discipline them - and their owners. This has happened in the past too: for instance, authorities trying to modernise Paris in the 19th century regarded stray dogs as belonging to the "city's criminal, dirty and rootless dangerous classes - to be slaughtered". But similar campaigns against stray dogs in Bombay in 1832 resulted in civil protest, used as an opportunity to challenge aspects of colonial rule.
