COMING from Africa, I often shake my head in bewilderment at the polar opposite way Europeans and Africans view certain issues.
To illustrate this, you need look no further that the amazing saga of Cecil the lion, shot in Zimbabwe by an American dentist recently.
While the Western media was beating its breast over the demise of Africa’s suddenly most iconic beast, people in Zimbabwe were scratching their heads wondering who the hell this fabulous feline was.
Why was some American bow-hunter now on the run, having his dentistry practice trashed by an avalanche of toy lions like voodoo dolls and vilified as a sadistic murderer comparable to Jack the Ripper?
The Zimbabwe government is now planning to build a shrine to Cecil, but this is possibly also to get tourists to make a pilgrimage to Hwange National Park, Cecil’s abode before his untimely end. Which is not a bad idea at all.
Yet the words of Zimbabwe journalist Kennedy Mavhumashava in The Bulawayo Chronicle give us an entirely different perspective, completely contrary to what you hear in the West.
Says Mr Mavhumashava: ‘It is not an overstatement that 99.99% of Zimbabweans didn’t know about this animal until Monday (when the news broke). Now we have just learnt, thanks to the British media, that we had Africa’s most famous lion all along, an icon!’
Mr Mavhumashava finds this a bit fishy. ‘(The) Western media’s obsession with Cecil gets us thinking. Why only him? What’s going on?’
I also wondered about that. Much as I side with Cecil, I have never known such vitriolic outpouring on social media in the West. So what is going on?
For The Bulawayo Chronicle and Mr Mavhumashava, there is no doubt what the answer to that is.
You see, unlike other lions, Cecil is named after Cecil Rhodes, as was Zimbabwe back when it was Rhodesia. Thus, according to the Chronicle, the mass outcry in the West is just neo-colonialism, hankering for the days when whites ruled supreme.
‘I find the Western outrage over the demise of Cecil, which is only a lion to many of us, suspicious,’ says Mr Mavhumashava. ‘Why such an outpouring of grief in the West over one lion? The name Cecil perhaps, given its historical significance for white monopoly capital in southern Africa and the West?
‘Many believe the lion was named after Cecil John Rhodes, the celebrated forerunner of British colonialism in southern Africa, explaining the saturation coverage on the demise of his namesake.’
He continues: ‘This was a simple hunt and Zimbabwe wants more of them to generate revenue for our tourism sector.’
Hmm… obviously Mr Mavhumashava doesn’t know that today in the West being a neo-colonialist is just one notch above being a racist or homophobe.
The most vociferous indignation and Twitter outrage over Cecil’s death comes from those who would rather rub honey on their bellies and lie naked on an anthill than be slurred so horribly.
I have little truck with trophy (as opposed to meat) hunters, but accept that the dollars they spend is often responsible for keeping some places truly wild.
Unpalatable as it may seem, the exorbitant licence fees paid by the hunting fraternity and the mega-bucks (no pun) they pony up for a spectacular rack of kudu horns or a black-maned lion is sometimes a key incentive to stop subsistence farmers from driving off all wild life.
In southern Africa, trophy hunting which normally targets elderly animals past their breeding prime, brings in $1-billion a year.
This is not true in Cecil’s case, as many tourists did go Hwange National Park to see the magnificent creature with his trademark black mane.
Thus for the basket case that poses as Zimbabwe’s economy, Cecil was worth more alive than dead.
But I am not here to argue the case for or against hunting – I’m just pointing out the polar opposites of how we see things.
So to sum up: according to the European media, we are all outraged over the demise of the world’s most famous lion (if nothing else, Cecil is that now).
According to the Zimbabwean media, this is suspiciously like neo-colonialism.
