As the American news media loses its collective mind over "Cecil the Lion," a poached lion in Zimbabwe -- all the while virtually ignoring the latest Planned Parenthood revelations -- citizens of the African nation can't see what all the fuss is about, as Reuters correspondent MacDonald Dzirutwe explained in his July 30 story (emphasis mine):
For most people in the southern African nation, where unemployment tops 80 percent and the economy continues to feel the after-effects of billion percent hyperinflation a decade ago, the uproar had all the hallmarks of a 'First World Problem'.
"Are you saying that all this noise is about a dead lion? Lions are killed all the time in this country," said Tryphina Kaseke, a used-clothes hawker on the streets of Harare. "What is so special about this one?"
As with many countries in Africa, in Zimbabwe big wild animals such as lions, elephants or hippos are seen either as a potential meal, or a threat to people and property that needs to be controlled or killed.
The world of Palmer, who paid $50,000 to kill 13-year-old Cecil, is a very different one from that inhabited by millions of rural Africans who are more than occasionally victims of wild animal attacks.
According to CrocBITE, a database, from January 2008 to October 2013, there were more than 460 recorded attacks by Nile crocodiles, most of them fatal. That tally is almost certainly a massive underrepresentation.
"Why are the Americans more concerned than us?" said Joseph Mabuwa, a 33-year-old father-of-two cleaning his car in the center of the capital. "We never hear them speak out when villagers are killed by lions and elephants in Hwange."
In additional to natural predators, Zimbabweans have long suffered the financial consequences of the disastrous leftist policies of Robert Mugabe and his party's iron-clad hold on power. Of course you never see any of this reported in the American news media, even one that insists it too believes that "black lives matter."
