Slain lawyer's father makes demands

THE father of the slain Gweru lawyer, Lucia Duve has made some demands to the family of the suspected killer boyfriend to mark the beginning of dialogue between the two families as per African tradition.

Lucy, who was based in Gweru was allegedly brutally attacked by her boyfriend, Tashinga Musonza in November and in the process fractured her skull, bruised her ribs among some other injuries leading to her death. Speaking at his Suburbs home last week in the presence of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister, Ziyambi Ziyambi, Permanent Secretary Mrs Virginia Mabhiza and other ministry officials, Mr Godwin Duve said he had made his demands to the boyfriend's family.

Although he could not reveal the list of the demands he made, he hinted that it was the beginning of a dialogue between the two families. Mr Duve has been declining any dialogue with the Musonza family since the death of his daughter.

"The Musonzas made contact via our church several times, we are Catholic and they asked the priest to come and tell us that they wanted to come and mourn with us but we declined a few times as it was still fresh, we were mourning. However, later on with the assistance of our church priests again we managed to send a request of what we need as a family to start dialogue and this has been given to them so we are waiting for some feedback from the Musonzas'," he said.

Traditional Shona practices allows for an aggrieved family, in the case of murder, to make demands to the accused family as a way of creating dialogue that may lead to compensation of the aggrieved parties.

Mr Duve said he and his family were reluctant to engage the Musonza family initially owing to the demeanour they presented when they attended a court session; he says they made offensive utterances that irked his family. Mr Duve was at pains to explain what he understood took place on the fateful day.

"I believe these people went out on a mission to kill her and they did. It really touched me a lot such that ndakafunga kuti dai zvake akamupfuura nepfuti it would have been much better and she would have died a less painful death but with those injuries, she must have suffered a lot of pain before she died," he said, burying his head in his chest.

Mr Duve said he also understood that people involved in her death went to see Lucy's corpse at the mortuary.

"After Lucy was killed I understand that they went to the mortuary to see her body, we are African people, what were they going to do there? Had they gone to confirm she was really dead or not? What did they want with my daughter's body when we were not there as her people," he questioned.

He added: "Who gave them the permission to see the body when they have no relation with us? It pained us as a family that they would do such in our absence."

July Moyo the Minister of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing who accompanied Ziyambi also expressed his shock at the incident.

"We have not heard of such an act in the history of the Air Force because these are usually a well disciplined lot, I know they take a strong line on their own when dealing with such cases.

"Please accept the visits from the officials at the Air Force of Zimbabwe so that they may assist and also help establish the character of this individual. They are also probably soul searching as it is. It helps in also identifying other officers who may have personality problems and prevent incidents like this happening," he said.

Moyo further said during training of service men they have special courses on how to handle spouses and people of the opposite sex because they would have been toughened up and were actually men of steel. He said it came as a surprise that Musonza allegedly killed his partner in such a manner despite training on discipline. Mr Duve, however, made a revelation that his daughter was attacked in the Josiah Tungamirai Air base.

"Tashinga started attacking Lucy at the air base, we hear his friends tried to stop the attack to no avail to an extent that he took her out of the base and the attack continued at her house. I am surprised that they had a fight of serious magnitude which other men failed to stop, how then did they fail to get intervention from security personnel that man the airbase? They simply let him leave with her knowing very well he was attacking her and it is very painful to fathom because she died at the hands of this man," he said.

Mrs Mabhiza and Ziyambi, however, promised to have the matter dealt with in the most transparent manner to ensure justice for Lucy. Meanwhile, Musonza appeared in court on Tuesday where he was remanded in custody to 28 January 2019.