High Court judge, Justice Sunsley Zisengwe has sentenced a 66-year-old Chivi man to 13 years in jail after convicting him of murdering a six-year-old boy he chased down and strangled for stealing chewing cane (ipwa) from his garden.
The court heard
that Alphios Gwatirinda (66) of Dzigagwi Village, Headman Gororo, Chivi chased
after Blessed Mafirowanda (6) of Charamba Village, Headman Gororo, Chivi for
about 20 metres, caught him and strangled him to death with his bare hands.
Gwatirinda then
carried the body for about 300 metres and hid it in a bushy area.
The incident
happened on March 4, 2022, and Gwatirinda will be 79 years old when he leaves
jail.
The court
concluded that Gwatirinda was of sound mind when he committed the murder.
Gwatirinda was
represented by Derick Charamba on a pro-deo basis and Emmanuel Matose
prosecuted.
Charamba argued
that the State cannot rely on the evidence of Blessed’s 11-year-old-brother as
it was inconsistent.
“The boy did
not report the supposed murder immediately, not even when directly asked by his
mother about his missing brother. This delay raises a fundamental question: If
he truly saw his brother being strangled, why did he remain silent for so long?
Fear of his mother’s reaction is an insufficient and implausible excuse when
weighed against the gravity of witnessing a murder.
“The boy
continued to withhold his supposed knowledge even as a search party was
actively looking for his missing brother. This defies natural human behavior. A
genuine eyewitness would have spoken immediately to direct searchers to the
location of the body…,” argued Charamba.
Circumstances
are that Blessed, his older brother Lovemore (10), Tinashe Charamba (12) and
Ernest Dube (10) went to drive their cattle from the grazing lands and penned
them at Morgan Rudhodho’s homestead.
The quartet
went and stole chewing cane from a nearby garden around 5:30pm and that is when
they bumped into Gwatirinda.
Gwatirinda
accused the boys of stealing from his garden and the minors ran away from him
in different directions. They dropped the chewing cane.
Gwatirinda
chased after Blessed and Lovemore and caught Blessed whom he strangled and
dumped the body in a bushy area some 300 metres away.
Lovemore went
home around 8pm and told his mother Sithembile Ndlovu that Blessed had been
captured by Gwatirinda. Ndlovu went to Gwatirinda’s homestead and confronted
him over the matter. Gwatirinda refused the allegations.
A search party
led by Lovemore found Blessed’s lifeless body in the morning. A postmortem
performed by Dr Godfrey Zimbwa at Masvingo Provincial Hospital concluded that
the cause of death was strangulation and respiratory failure. Masvingo Mirror
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