Robert Mugabe Archives | InsideJourneys

I haven’t seen the video and I don’t plan to. But I’m outraged that Go Daddy‘s Bob Parsons even thought of

Hwange Elephant - No question. She's close2 — Hwange Elephant up close - Photo Marcia Mayne

creating one glorifying his recent shooting of an elephant in Zimbabwe.

The arguments he and others like him use to justify this act are old and well worn.

Ditto the arguments the Zimbabwean officials use.

There was so much hope, so much promise in the newly independent Zimbabwe. Instead, it has been saddled with a government that for more than 30 years has been sucking the life out of it. All the economic indicators have fallen and continue to do so. In 2009, when hyperinflation had so devalued its currency, it was forced to stop using it in favor of the South African Rand, UK Pound or the US Dollar.

To use an African saying, “When two elephants fight, the grass suffers.”

Unfortunately, the elephants are now caught in the fight between people, like Parsons, who have deep pockets and corrupt government officials, like the ones in Zimbabwe, that’ll do just about anything to line their own pockets.

Hwange Elephants3 — Hwange National Park Elephant

It is against this backdrop that Parson has seen fit to pose, wrapped in his suit of arrogance and sense of entitlement, his foot atop the carcass of the elephant he just slaughtered.

That arrogance, that sense of entitlement bothers me because that’s what drive men like Parsons to kill elephants and other animals.

It is that same arrogance, sense of entitlement and unbridled greed that drive Mugabe, and men of his ilk, and cause their own people to suffer needlessly.

Sadly, between the two of them, the elephants won’t have a change. They will continue to be slaughtered.