Our Truth About Cecil The Lion

The most famous lion in the world (outside Zimbabwe) was killed the other day.

A foreign hunter Walter Palmer is said to have paid two Zimbabweans USD50,000 to kill a lion and well, Cecil was that lion who had a bow and arrow put him to death.

Now the story has gathered loads of coverage on various international media and not so much here in a country where lions are not as big a novelty as they are for those who live in places far from here.

The truth of the matter is we are more interested in the deal, that people are paying such copious amounts of money to kill animals here illegally (the local facilitators were not licensed to do so in that area). It begs the question, how much more is being made and if it wasn’t because Cecil was famous would we have known of this corruption?

But that is quite frankly as much as we care on the subject. Only one person at 3-mob.com and its affiliates knew of Cecil before his demise. That one person admitted that said Cecil was never a character of interest.

The simple fact of life is that it is rather disturbing that the death of that lion has gotten more sympathy from international mainstream press than the murder of innocent black people on the streets of America by police. Calls for Palmer to hung and the sort are being thrown about while murderers of black human beings are treated as victims of circumstances beyond their control.

In effect we will take it further. The number of times lions have killed people in places like Kariba have never been treated with such sympathy for the victims or their families with stories written in largely distasteful language almost ridiculing them.

Right now, in many rural areas, people live in fear of these animals for which the west offers the luxury of dirges and opprobrium for those who do not share the same sentiments.

Simple fact of the matter is, well, 2,000 people have lost their jobs in the last coupe of weeks in a shrinking economy.

A grandmother in Chivi would find that more of a story worth lamenting than someone mourning a shumba.

That said, we have one less lion in our country. That sucks.