Chiengi Charlie

Chiengi Charlie was a man-eating lion of the Chiengi district at the north-eastern tip of Lake Mweru, in what was then Northern Rhodesia and is now Zambia, on the border with the Congo. He was so light-coloured that people called him the White Lion, and he was missing half his tail.

For years, accounts say from about 1900 to 1909, he raided the villages around the remote British post at Chiengi. Villagers slept by fires and kept watch all night, yet he went on killing; one story says he killed a servant sent to hunt him. Experienced hunters failed to shoot him. Only one person is remembered for fighting him off: a woman who struck him in the face with a burning stick when he broke into her hut. Lists of man-eaters credit him with about ninety victims.

Local people believed he carried the restless spirit of Chali, a wizard killed by villagers long before; the British, mishearing the name, called him Charlie. He was eventually shot. Chiengi itself gained a dark reputation, and was later the only boma in Northern Rhodesia closed down because of witchcraft beliefs.