Murder issues

Since l was a little girl, l have often thought that Zimbabwe is safer than South Africa. I have often known that you can just get shot in South Africa over nothing. I have heard of car-jackers and people being thrown off building or being stabbed to death. And as l thought of all this l always felt safer in my beautiful country.

However of late l don’t feel safe anymore, there has been an outbreak (if l could be allowed to use that) of crime. People are killing each other every single day. It’s even worse because these are not just random crimes. Newspapers are awash with headlines like “Jilted lover stabs woman” or ex-lover stabs and kills woman or brothers killing each other.

The world has literally turned into a warzone area. People kill each other over minor issues. Someone can die over a 5 rand coin. What is worse is that people are not killed by strangers, they are killed by people they trust, people they love and people who are close to them.

About a week ago, in my neighbourhood, two brothers had a fight which resulted in the death of the older brother. The younger brother striked his older brother with a hoe on the head three times before fleeing. From my understanding, theses brothers where fighting over a house, their parent’s house. It took a week before the killer was found somewhere near Ntabazinduna.

 

During the time l he was missing, l felt unsafe during that time; l could help but wonder if he would harm more people where he was. I felt scared and I was even afraid of moving around in the dark and l wondered how his siblings felt.

I am happy that there are responsible citizens around who saw him and reported to the police that they had seen a fugitive. When he was caught, the police came with him to his home. I have never seen a crowd that big, people wanted to see the guy who had killed his brother in cold blood, they wanted to look into his eyes and see if there was a sign of regret. People kept murmuring and making obscene statements that I cannot put down into words.

I have known this guy ever since I was a little girl, l also wanted to see how he will react and if he really was sorry. I tried so hard to look at him and the human in me was hoping to find something, a trace of regret or something close to that. But l didn’t see anything of that sort, no sign of remorse or anything. I wondered how he would kill his own brother and still manage to keep a straight face. I wondered how he felt as people he used to know and hang out with looked at him in disgust. Funny enough, he actually had the nerve to look at the people, look at all of us and stick his tongue out at us. He made a mocking gesture at us!!  Is he proud of what he did? Does that mean, “don’t worry, I’ll be back”? I was honestly touched and hurt. What has happened to this guy?

As I was part of the crowd watching him as he gave out his statement to the police, l heard some people say things about this guy, things that made me even more scared. These people said that this guy had a book where he made a list of the people he wanted to kill \and apparently his brother had been part of the list. They said that in that book, he mentioned that he had killed another guy (name withheld). I was really shocked and I realised that probably these are the deeds of a serial killer. Who would keep a list of names of people he wanted to kill and would also indicate that he has eliminated someone from the list.

This got me thinking. I wondered what sentence he would get, how he would defend his actions, how he would defend the fact that he ran away. I wished l could attend his court case but unfortunately l couldn’t. For all its worth, l wish he would get a life sentence. And l hope l would not see him out on the streets before year ends.