Rhino poaching: Who is to blame?

 

It is astonishing to acknowledge the fact that in the 21st century, there are still people from western countries who are firm believers of superstition. According to Kenneth R. Weiss of the Los Angeles Times, 450 rhinos were killed in South Africa, merely for their horns.

Nations like China, Vietnam and Thailand have a belief that rhino horns can cure cancer. It is common knowledge all around the world that Africa is rich in natural resources/treasure and we have a lot of game reserves, which has caused a large demand for rhino horns from Africa and them being killed without any remorse.

Thus these actions have raised a lot of questions and debates as to; who then kills these rhinos? As much as we Africans are raising a plea and campaigns against the killing of our national treasure, we are as much to blame as the westerners. The Chinese may create a demand but they do not really fly down here and kill the rhinos themselves, truth is there are some greedy SA poachers who roam among us and kill these rhinos in exchange for a quick buck from the rich Chinese.

The facts are out there, we can debate amongst each other about this issue the whole day but these rhinos are still being killed out there everyday and there are in a verge of being extinct- question is...

WHERE TO FROM HERE?

Did the SA media go too far?

WAS THE MEDIA UN-AFRICAN ABOUT PUBLISHING THE ILLNESS OF NELSON MANDELA?

When looking back at the oldern days and how Africans used to live and do things, we learn that the illness of somebody was not something to be disclosed in public until it reaches a point of death. Some things were kept private and respected to a certain point

Last year we saw the media splashing the illness of our former president Nelson Mandela in front pages like it was tabloid news. Some were puzzled as to why is the media publishing this information,whereas some felt it was their right to know since he is a public figure and an icon from Africa

Well, times have changed and so has the media. Privacy for public figures has become a thing of the past, but this practice often backfires because they sometimes publish false information and then they get sued. I believe that his illness should not have been published to the public because it was really irrelevent information for us to know, his family needed to deal with this privately and that should have been respected

There are much more serious issues that are affecting our society that the media needs to write about so that the government can attend to and Nelson Mandela's illness is not one of them.