I don’t understand why everyone was so upset about the death of Cecil. Okay, let me rephrase that: I don’t understand why everyone was blindly upset about the death of Cecil. Now before this goes too far too fast, I must simply express my undying love for gentle creaure—a love so strong that I became an “ethical vegan”—a person who abstains from consuming or using animal products for any purpose—three years ago. This decision seemed completely natural after deciding to become a vegetarian at age 11. However, the lion’s character is up for debate. In fact, an August 1 New York Times Op-ed by Goodwell Nzou, a native Zimbabwean, speaks to quite the contrary about our friendly, beloved and neighborly lion Cecil. In Zimbabwe, the lion isn’t spoken of as a friend, but rather something to fear. The loathing is so much so that when Goodwell  heard the news of a lion’s death, “the village boy inside me [him] instinctively cheered: One lion fewer to menance families like mine.” 

Without hesitation, though, I can say that for a moment I sided with staunch animal rights’ activist Ingrid Newkirk, president of People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals who lamented “Hunting is a coward’s pastime. If, has been reported, this dentist and his guides lured Cecil out of the park with food so as to shoot him on private property, because shooting him in the park would have been illegal, he needs to be extradited, charged, and preferably, hanged.” 

Well, aside from that little part about the death penalty, I believed that it was important to bring this issue to light. But the mainstream media churned up more and more stories about Cecil the lion, I became disenchanted with the movement all together.

The inequality and malice that fills our world is unbelievable. However, a flash of the news would make you think  for a moment that the hunting of animals is among the very worst of our problems.

When we focus so much on the death of a lion in a country that even many intelligent Americans fail to locate on a map, we are hindering our ability to concentrate on greater world problems. 

President Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi violated his country’s constitution to give himself a shot at the third term of a presidency. Now we are all hoping desperately that the country doesn’t descend into ethnic violence again, as the president was sworn in for his third term on Aug. 20. 

South Sudan is victim to not only the massive displacement and death encouraged by another war but also to the feckless leadership of two individuals who once spoke so proudly of the country’s independence—an indepenence that separated it from the pernicious leadership in President Omar al-Bashir’s Sudan. Now, South Sudan is nothing more than an identical twin to its violent neighbor as peace talks once again are stalled by the president, who requested an additional 15 days to decide on whether or not to sign the Intergovernmental Auhority on Government peace agreement that would end the civil war. 

In Sudan, the genocidal dictator Omar al-Bashir continues to commit terrible atrocities in Darfur and has expanded these atrocities into other regions of the country’s regions—Blue Nile and South Kordofan. In 2003, as a method of counterinsurgency to attacks on the government by rebel groups—the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudan Liberation Army—the government launched the Darfur genocide. According to United to End Genocide, some 300,000 have been killed, and three million more have been displaced. 

Bashir’s crimes have expanded to southern Sudan in South Kordofan and the Blue Nile region where the government is attempting to use a similar method to weed out the influence of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army-North, a rebel group—now South Sudan’s army—that fought alongside the Southerners in the war between Sudan and present-day South Sudan. 

There are issues around the world that require our attention. No, they are not just in Africa, as I will be among the first to point out. The successes individual countries on the continent have obtained span from Rwanda’s astounding economic success to South Africa’s significant technological advances. However, in order to fully understand the world in which we live, we sometimes need to take a look beyond the story happens to splash across the television screen. 

A president violated his country’s constitution in order to take hold of a third term. Political leaders of the world’s newest independent state have forced their crowning achievement into civil war in order to stay in or vie for power. 

The only sitting head-of-state wanted for the crime of genocide by the International Criminal Court remains at large, and he has since expanded his campaign of violence. All of our cries did little to help the lions of the southern African country of Zimbabwe largely because the Zimbabwean people have seen past the “innocent lion” facade. 

There is an old African proverb that reads, “Until the lion learns to speak, tales of hunting will always be told by the hunter.” Okay, please, let’s not take that too literally. While we have spent so many hours waiting for the impossible—waiting for Simba to speak—the real voice of the lions have been silenced. We need the people of Burundi, Sudan and South Sudan to tell their stories. The lion needs to be heard.