ZRP Traffic officers in near fist fight with mourners

There was drama at the famous Danger Hill on the Gwanda Bulawayo highway on Friday when members of the ZRP highway patrol squad were involved in a near fist fight with mourners most of them aged women.

Trouble for the police officers started when the police officers manning a four men road block stopped a Nyaradzo Funeral Services Bus full of mourners following behind a hearse carrying a corpse for burial in Filabusi. The driver of the hearse who was not stopped by the police stopped about 200m down the hill when he realised that the bus had been stopped.

The police officers asked the driver of the bus to come out of the bus for a "side discussion" a few metres from the bus. The "side discussion" now joined by the driver of the hearse, went on for over 15 minutes raising the ire of the mourners who had then stopped singing the usual sombre songs sung to accompany the deceased.

A group of up to 20 mourners got out of the bus heading straight at the police officers demanding to know why they were being delayed and their deceased being disrespected by the police who had stopped them for so long. Tempers flew higher when the police officers demanded that the mourners get back into the bus and not interfere with their work. This drew anger from an elderly mourning woman who asked why the police were not issuing the driver with a ticket if he was at fault than to be delayed for over 20 minutes.

Further fracas broke out when the police officers demanded the woman to leave and get back in the bus. The woman was overhead screaming that she will beat up the police officer who was failing to respect her dead relative who was in the hearse 200 meters in front of them.

"Am not afraid of this young man let me beat him up," screamed the woman as other mourners battled to restrain her. "Why must I respect him if he can not respect our deceased," she went on adding some very serious unprintable tribal insults.

While the police officers were pushing and shoving with the mourners, one of the mourners made a call to someone who appeared to have been a senior police officer who demanded to speak to the officer in charge of the road block. Immediately after talking on the phone the officer quickly pulled his officers aside and ordered the drivers and passengers to get back in the vehicles and leave without any charges laid on the bus driver.

On a quick enquiry from one of the police officers it emerged that the Nyaradzo Funeral Services bus had no insurance and the police had stopped it before and had warned the driver to produce the insurance documents and so when they saw the same bus coming they wanted to check if the driver had complied with the directive.

According to the officer, the police officers had previously allowed the bus to proceed to its destination as it was carrying mourners out of courtesy but they could not continue allowing it to travel carrying mourners without insurance. It could not immediately be ascertained if indeed the bus had no insurance.

Asked as to who was on the phone call that immediately disbursed the fracas, the officer only said that they also have people who they take instructions from and when the instructions are given they can't debate them.

An official at Nyaradzo Funeral Services in Bulawayo expressed ignorance on the matter insisting that all their buses were insured and road worth and not at all putting their passengers at a risk.