Rita Miljo

Rita Miljo (Neumann; 18 February 1931 – 27 July 2012) was a South African conservationist and animal rights pioneer noted for founding and managing the "Centre for Animal Rehabilitation and Education" (CARE) near Phalaborwa in South Africa.

Born in East Prussia shortly before World War II began, she had dreams from an early age of becoming a veterinarian.

When the war broke out, she became involved in the girls' wing of the Hitler Youth, but quit when her father no longer supported the Nazis.

After a brief stint studying psychology in university, she worked in a factory and then at the Hagenbeck Zoo.

When her fiance moved to Johannesburg, Neumann followed him there and they married.

Initially, Miljo worked in an office, but spent her weekends studying animals in the Kruger National Park.

Rita Neumann was born on 18 February 1931 in Heilsberg, a small village in Eastern Prussia near Königsberg, Germany, which is now known as Kaliningrad and in Russia.

She grew up with a brother in a middle-class family and dreamed of becoming a veterinarian.

Her mother was strict and overprotective, limiting the activities in which Neumann was allowed to participate.

At the age of eight, she joined the League of German Girls (the girls' wing of the Hitler Youth), relishing being able to compete in sports.

Within a year, she became a leader in the Hitler Youth programme and was the province's youngest leader.

Her father was drafted into the army, but after the invasion of Poland did not support the Nazi regime and his daughter no longer participated in Hitler Youth.

Looking back on Nazism, Neumann later said that she was "young and naïve" only later realizing "the total madness we were subjected to".

When the war ended in 1945, the family relocated to Bavaria in search of employment and schools for the children.

They eventually settled in Hamburg where her father found a civil service position and Neumann began attending the Kloster Schule, a nearby girls' high school.

Completing her studies in 1949, her plans to qualify as a veterinarian were thwarted by the post-war West German policy of favouring war veterans for admission to universities.

She enrolled in psychology courses, but she did not enjoy them and quit her studies when her mother was diagnosed with cancer.

After her mother's death in 1951, Neumann took a factory job and brought her younger brother Peter to live with her.

When her father remarried, Peter returned to the family home and Neumann began working at the Hagenbeck Zoo, caring for primates.

At the age of nineteen, she met Lothar Simon, who was studying to become a mining engineer at the Technical University of Berlin.

When Simon graduated and secured a post in South Africa in 1953, Neumann decided to emigrate, hoping she could work with animals.

Simon had arranged for her to have a work permit and an office job, prior to her arrival.

The couple married in February 1954.

Simon worked in the gold fields and became very successful, allowing Neumann to be independent and adventurous.

On weekends, Neumann would leave Johannesburg and travel to Kruger National Park.

She met an ornithologist there, Dr. Kleynhans, who taught her South African history.

The two travelled together into Zambia and Zimbabwe, where Kleynhans made recordings of birds.

Neumann assisted him in his work by cataloguing his recordings.

She learned to fly and because male instructors would not teach her aerobatics, she bought a book and taught herself to do loops and spirals.

She bought a 50-acre parcel of land in Limpopo Province on the banks of the Olifants River in 1963.

In 1963, she purchased a 50-acre parcel of land on the banks of the Olifants River in Limpopo Province.

She spent a lot of time away from home there.

She first camped in a tent and later built a one-room hut on the property, to which she would bring her daughter Karin.

In 1972, both Simon and 17-year-old Karin were killed in a 1972 crash in a light aircraft, which he was piloting.

In 1980, she rescued an orphaned female baboon and became determined to establish a wildlife sanctuary for animals on her property.

By 1980, Neumann had remarried; her husband, Piet Miljo, was an Afrikaner.

In 1989, she founded CARE, and developed a system to rehabilitate injured and orphaned animals so that they could be reintroduced to the wild.

Because of her lack of training, her work initially was viewed by scientists with scepticism, but she came to be regarded as an expert in baboon care.

Miljo died in a fire on the CARE property in 2012.

Her life and work have been commemorated in several movies, television programmes, and a book.