Are crocodile attacks getting more frequent in Zimbabwe?
A woman from southern Masvingo province has spoken of the terrifying moment her neighbour was snatched by a crocodile on Sunday afternoon as the pair did their washing in a dam, the official Chronicle newspaper reported.
Making the attack even more tragic, the victim Etina Tongoona saw the crocodile before it attacked her at Bangala dam – but thought it had gone away, according to the report.
The woman’s badly mauled body was recovered the next day. Her neighbour Mildred Dube may have avoided attack because she was out of the water washing her clothes in a bucket.
Less than two weeks ago, a boy was snatched from the Save River, in south-eastern Zimbabwe. He was fishing to raise money for school fees, the Manica Post reported. A fisherman was taken by a crocodile at a dam in Hwange last week, according to the Chronicle.
And terrifying footage of a crocodile attacking an Australian woman and her friend in the resort of Kariba went viral at the beginning of the month. Crocodile populations are reported to have increased in Kariba, possibly as a result of farming operations that require a certain number of hatchlings to be released into the lake.
CrocBITE, a worldwide crocodilian attack database manned from Australia, has details of a number of attacks in Zimbabwe stretching back to at least 2010.
The organisation says of crocodile-human conflict situations: “Often people have no choice but to undertake potentially risky activities… People may be fully aware of the risk of encountering a crocodile, but accept that risk anyway.”
