Gwanda 'lunatic' drives away with Ambulance

A known Gwanda "lunatic" Polite Ngwenya continues to out do his acts and this time decided to have himself an emergency drive in a state ambulance from Gwanda Town to his rural home in Lushongwe area 40kms away.

Ngwenya who is the son of a prominent Gwanda businessman Johnson Sitshela Ngwenya was only released from custody a few weeks ago after serving time for setting fire on  a homestead belonging to his father's brother.

It is alleged that in a moment of his madness he set the homestead on fire because he did not like the idea that his father's brother David Ngwenya, belonged to the MDC led by Prof Welshman Ncube and was the ward chairman of their rural village while he and the rest of the family "belonged" to ZANU PF. According to him the elderly Ngwenya was embarrassing the family by belonging to the opposition party.

In another of his acts, locals allege that early last year Ngwenya went to court to marry his long-time lover signed the marriage certificate and immediately demanded the magistrate who had just completed their marriage process to divorce them. It is said that friends and family were shocked and tried to stop him from the demands but he demanded the divorce till a date for a divorce hearing was immediately set before he left the court. Its not clear if he went ahead with the divorce. In another of his moments, before his arrest last year, it is also reported that he went to the Gwanda Police charge office in a ZANU PF T-shirt and challenged all police officers at the station to a fist fight one by one. This was following an incident in the town when members of the ZRP Gwanda had gone on an uncontrolled onslaught beating up the people of Gwanda following the murder of one of their officers in the town. Ngwenya armed with bricks and sticks went to the charge office and demanded that the police come out of the station one by one for a fight. He was however persuaded to give up the challenge by a passer by who happened to know him.

In this, his latest act, Ngwenya is reported to have found a Ministry of Health Ambulance parked in front of the supermarket in Gwanda with the keys in the car and a nurse sitting inside. He threatened the nurse to get out of the car and drove away with ambulance switching on the emergency beacon lights and siren. Ngwenya who does not have a driving licence managed to drive the ambulance 40km out of Gwanda to his rural Lushongwe home and stopped at the local community health centre where he was reprimanded by the local people who were shocked at how he had got the ambulance. How he managed to drive over the narrow accident prone Mtshabezi River bridge and past a police roadblock at near by Bar 20 mine and also over the narrow and dangerous Tuli River bridge in his first real driving experience leaves everyone confused.

Ngwenya has since appeared at the Gwanda Magistrates Court and remanded in custody for the offence to the 7th of November. The magistrate has demanded that he be sent for urgent medical check to ascertain his sanity by two mental health experts.