Living & Dying In Mugabe's Zimbabwe

There aren't very many sectors that Mugabe's thirty year destructive rule has left untouched. The entire country is falling to pieces and people are just expected to change with the times and get on with it.

Speaking to a friend in Zimbabwe just the other day, I was told how they spend the day looking for money, which they then use to purchase fuel for their tiny motor car and then they spend time looking for food that they can afford and then they go home - the whole thing to be done again the next day.

My friend lost his job about three years ago when the company he worked for went bust.

But the point I want to make is that the roads are in a very bad state of repair, and the vehicles that use them are not much better - and this is bound to resultem>The Easter holidays began today with a chilling statistic. 43 people dead in five horrific road crashes this week alone.

Transport, Communication and Infrastructure Minister Nicholas Goche yesterday said this was already the "bloodiest Easter holiday in the history of road traffic safety in our county".

On Wednesday night, The Herald visited the scene of one of these horrific accidents, where the broken bodies of the six dead in a commuter omnibus crash along the Harare-Nyamapanda Road were strewn across the road and surrounding bushes.

Police sources have said their initial investigations suggest that this was another case of speeding, and drinking and driving."

minibus crash wjtLy 16744

Obviously there is the human factor is the one distinct variable and if you were to read this report you will see the suggestion that the vehicle was speeding and the truck that it hit did not have the required reflectors or lights. And that the vehicle rolled for 200 metres - well, that alone is proof of speeding.

"The kombi overturned about 200 metres from the point of impact, indicating excess speed on the driver’s part.

It was typical blood and gore stuff, with one man’s head getting crushed and several other passengers getting dismembered.

This reporter had the misfortune of slipping on pieces of human flesh and bones on arriving at the accident scene.

It was more of a battleground than anything else; "bloodbath" is perhaps the most fitting description."

I am a little surprised that reporters were permitted to wander through the accident scene.

I would have thought that everything needed to remain where it lay - that's how I did accident scenes - and I had my fair share of them.

I remember one accident involving an army heavy that had flipped with 20 youngsters on board...

From "Without Honour":

"Even though I was putting so much time in court, I still found myself having to deal with standard Police work that either did not need to go to court, or would only pass through my court en route to Bulawayo.

Every death in Zimbabwe is recorded as a SDD (Sudden Death Docket) - even if that death is not suspicious. In suspicious circumstances the SDD becomes part of the court docket - otherwise it is a simple set piece of documentation which, once completed, together with the post mortem report, is signed off by a Magistrate and filed “NFA” (No Further Action).

Road Traffic Accidents had also became part of my remit, together with prosecutions.

A bit of a juggling act, but I have never been one to duck hard work. And I was even enjoying it!

By about July/August 1982, events occurred that left me shocked. It also opened my eyes to the part that politics play in the life of a policeman, even if I did stay apolitical, as required by the strict training I had received.

I had been in court on the day in question and was aware that an Annual Inspection was looming. Once every year at least, the Officer Commanding District (or higher, if possible) will visit each Police Station to inspect records, policing standards, docket standards and anything that goes together with them, be it transport, administration or family social structure.

My major concern was that the effort that I had been putting in at the courts was finally paying off on the backlog and I wanted to clear it in its entirety by the time of the inspection.

Section Officer Tasker was still based at the Station, but had indicated that he was moving on - the new Zimbabwe was not for him. Sad, because he was a good copper - a genuine bloke and someone whom all ranks could rely upon.

Anyway, he was out at a liaison meeting with the army chiefs at Shaw Army Barracks in Mbalabala. I was busy in my office, right next door to the radio room, when I heard Tasker calling for me by name.

The radio room duty constable nearly collided with me as I left my office. The fact that I had been called for by name meant something serious had happened and Tasker needed someone who would handle the paperwork without hindering the courts.

“306 Sunray, 306 - go ahead.” Why did all of this feel so ‘deja vous’?

“Bob, are you in uniform still?” What’s that got to do with anything? Hang on - sometimes I would attend court in civilian clothes - I had another year of prosecuting in uniform ahead of me - and therefore playing at ‘change parades’ based on some cases… not an easy thing to do in the extreme heat of Matabeleland… by request of the Magistrate - his judgement based on the cases that he was hearing that day.

“Sunray, I’m back in district wear, confirm you need me? Over.”

“Roger that, Bob. You’ll have to bring the heavy. I’ll get you exact coordinates - but you might like to ask the local hospital for a couple of ambulances, and you’ll have to bring both body boxes and a bunch of blankets. Oh, and at least another pair of hands. We’ve had an Army heavy flip in the Glass Block area and he had passengers. Given the sitrep - situation report - that I have just had with Zulu November Alpha (pneumonic letters for ZNA, the Zimbabwe National Army), you might like to draw a weapon. Over.” Great - an SDD plus plus - just what I needed - not!

“Roger, Sunray. I just need enough time to check the truck over and load her up. Over.” The local hospital - “a couple of ambulances”? - they don’t have a couple of ambulances and the chances are that the one that they do have is either busy, off the road, or both… And we need weapons. Just gets better and better.

Minutes later, the vehicle was being juiced up whilst I took the map coordinates. Judging by the initial check, we were going quite deep into the bush.

Hell, sometimes I hated this job...

Firing up the crocodile - not my most favourite of motor vehicles, but at least I was driving it legally now - I nodded to Constable Matsa, who had been roped in to work with me on this one.

He nodded back to me and hastened to secure the two body boxes before the vibration of the engine could dislodge them any further. I noticed a small pile of old blankets on one of the passenger benches and wondered just how many of them we would be using.

As I approached the main gate of the Police Station to sign the vehicle out, I nodded again at Matsa, this time with a marked stare at his weapon to accompany it. It was pointless saying anything as he understood instinctively - and the clatter of the large diesel motor drowned everything out, anyway…

As the vehicle slid to a halt on the dirt surface, we both grabbed our weapons and threw one up the spout. Some things you just did without a word being said.

I was wearing chest webbing and had 4 spare magazines with me. In the Matabele heat, the webbing and I were disagreeing and I was losing, breaking into a heavy sweat.

Once clear of the Police Station gate, I headed for the highway - the same highway that took us to the ambush scene. Through Mbalabala we went and not very many kilometres further south of the ambush point, I indicated that we were going to turn right onto the road for the Glass Block area.

The road was dirt and was not in a very good condition and more than once I found myself having to make some sort of detour as the road just disappeared. Continually in radio communications with Sunray 306, we realised that we still had an hour’s drive at least ahead of us.

It became evident as the road continued to get worse with every passing kilometre that there was another heavy vehicle not that far ahead of us - with all the newly dispersed displaced debris, and every now and then the smell of diesel fumes and dust.

We never did get to see which vehicle had been ahead of us, but when we finally arrived on the scene, it was another one of those times when you start looking for the film crew, as it might have been your worst nightmare from a horror movie.

And we were going to need both body boxes and all of those blankets…

The offending Army vehicle - a large personnel carrier, the army equivalent to the police crocodile, called a “puma” - was lying upside down. The thin raised bridge affair that it had evidently come off was a good 3 metres above it and a good 25 metres away.

Now for the difficult bit…

There were bodies. Many bodies. In bits. And they all were children… Or teenagers…

What the hell had happened here? This can’t be right! How did a truck belonging to the Army cause all of this damage - to kids? And why kids?

I noticed a small group of locals gathering at one end of the ‘bridge’ and being kept at bay by a single armed soldier - holding his rifle (a G3, I think) across his chest, almost protectively, whilst he used his presence and the weapon’s proximity to his best advantage against the growing crowd.

I could hear a woman weeping… loudly.

Now when Africans grieve, they do it in style. With panache. None of this quiet grieving stuff… Full blown bawling… Keening. A terrible sound at any time of the day - especially so in the middle of the scorching African bush...

I scanned the scene looking for my Sunray. There he was, talking to an Army officer. He could only be an officer - given all the trimmings on his epaulettes and cap. I walked on over to the two of them and briefly braced up to the Army officer.

He barely even glanced in my direction - just walked off.

Tasker wandered up close to me...

“Bad one here, Bob. Truck full of mujibha’s picked up by the Army after a few minor dissident incidents. Driver lost it while crossing that at speed - flipped the truck a couple of times - killed all but the driver and one mujibha. The driver’s alright - shaken - but fine. The surviving mujibha has been taken through to Shaw Barracks, but I don’t think he’ll make it. You don’t have an Army Puma roll on you and come away without bloody nearly dying…”

During the Rhodesian war, much of the intelligence on the movement of the Rhodesian forces was passed on to the terrorists by the sheep herders and young men in the area - too young to join the struggle, but keen to help - these collaborators were known collectively as mujibhas. The new Zimbabwe government was obviously aware of this network and so were doing a sweep to find out what they knew.

It should be noted here that not all sheep herders and young men were mujibhas, and not all mujibhas passed on information voluntarily. Make of that what you will.

Robert Mugabe had started calling the political malcontents who had fled back into the bush, “dissidents” - the Readers’ Digest Universal Dictionary defines “dissident” as “disagreeing, as in opinion or belief - one who disagrees: especially, a citizen of a one-party state who is in fundamental disagreement with the prevailing politics or ideology” - interesting that the dictionary should use ‘one-party state’ as an example, although Zimbabwe had not been declared one as yet, but it was evidently on the cards…

I surveyed the scene and shook my head. “How many?” I asked, well, whispered - I was almost scared of his reply.

“Nineteen,” he said quietly. “Nineteen young lives snuffed out. One moment’s inattention….” He really didn’t have to say much more. But he had a job to do, and so did I

“I’ve told the soldiers not to touch a damn thing. Get drawing and measuring. I want this whole place tattooed on the inside of your brain pan by the time you leave here.”

“Yessir,” I responded, although my mind was shouting, “Where do I start?”

Quickly I set about establishing the immovable area - the bridge - if you could call it that. It was really just a raised earthen strip, about the width of a heavy vehicle, with drain pipes fitted at regular intervals along its length. If there were to be any heavy rains, this bridge and several others like it were going to be in danger of being washed away.

It was quite easy to see how the driver had come off the ‘bridge’.

Measuring things, using paces, I was able to establish the position of the overturned vehicle.

Then Constable Matsa and I started the ghoulish job of plotting the exact whereabouts of, and removing, the body parts. There were little arms, and even smaller legs - a head even. A tiny crushed torso with no arms or legs - probably no more that twelve or thirteen years of age, barely resembling the remains of a small human being. The heavy vehicle had worked like a giant food mixer as it flipped.

Remember that within the personnel carrier, there were no luxuries. The vehicle was built of heavy gauge steel and had all sorts of angles and protuberances along its bodywork. Its job was to carry men to war and protect the occupants from rifle fire or landmine explosion. Little regard was given to safety in the event of an accident, mainly because a big vehicle like that is not expected to crash. It’s too heavy, too big a structure to sustain damage - that was the whole idea.

And any heavy vehicle is very unforgiving in an accident - especially one that involved the vehicle flipping violently.

Then we started matching the torn limbs to the destroyed bodies. Not easy, and the afternoon was nearly over before we finally had it worked out. Now came the hard part. We had to load the truck with what was left of these youngsters.

The recipient truck didn’t look much better than the truck that had chewed them all up and spat them out. Blood. Everywhere.

What was it with me and blood?

And then we had to organise for family to identify them wherever was best - no reason to do it at the scene as the whole thing is so horrific that there was no need to make the family live the trauma all over again.

I felt sorry for the families, as someone had to identify the bodies. How do you ask a doting mother or father to identify the body of their teenage son whose body has been ripped to shreds? How do you maintain some semblance of decency whilst family members view the destruction of the next generation?

In times like this, it was very hard to be a policeman.

Constable Matsa managed to communicate to the families, through their tears, that they should make their way to the Police Station the next day to get further information.

Given that there were so many bodies and body parts, I knew that the small mortuary in Esigodini would never handle the numbers - Mpilo Hospital here we come - again.

Driving that distance with a truck load of dead bodies is not fun. I don’t care who you are.

But determination has a way of allowing us humans to do things that we never thought we were capable of - and this was one of those times.

Offloading the smashed corpses at Mpilo was probably as hard to do as sorting them out and loading them in the first place. I was happy that apart from some paperwork, my brief liaison with the young people was done. That may be heartless, but at least it’s true."

Back to the accident in Zimbabwe that we were originally looking at...

"The 27-year-old driver, Simba Magomo, looked calm and answered questions as if nothing had happened.

Magomo said: "I was coming from Harare going to Mutoko and I suddenly saw a lorry in front of me.

"The hazards on the trailer were not on and I only realised that there was a lorry when it was too late. My efforts to avoid the truck failed as there was an on-coming vehicle.

"I do not know what really happened because the next thing the bus was lying on its roof and people screaming."

The joy of living (and dying) in Mugabe's Zimbabwe...

Robb WJ Ellis

The Bearded Man