Zanu-PF arsonists pose as firefighters

On June 11, 2025, my friend sent me a message I'll never forget: his wife had delivered a stillborn baby. The young couple was shattered. He said delays at the Harare hospital had cost them their child.

But that was only the beginning of the tragedy.

In the days that followed, his wife complained of sharp abdominal pain. Doctors prescribed antibiotics and dismissed her concerns. No scans. No urgency. Just a prescription and a shrug.

Only later did they realise her uterus had ruptured. By then, infection had ravaged her body.

When they finally took her to theatre, it was too late.

She died on June 24, 2025 - not because her condition was untreatable, but because the very system designed to save her life failed her completely.

She had walked into the hospital pregnant and hopeful. She left in a body bag.

This is not an isolated incident.

In 2019, Azza Mashumba, a government doctor, broke down in front of cameras as she described helplessly watching infants die in hospitals stripped of medicines, equipment, and basic dignity.

"There's no urgency, no priority - no one is listening to us," she said. "We're trying to come up with contingency plans, but everything we do feels futile. We need support." Mashumba decried the "still births" and "disabled babies" that were a result of a broken healthcare system.

Her public grief exposed the raw human cost of Zimbabwe's crumbling healthcare system.

And yet, six years later, the Zanu-PF government continues to stage photo-op "inspections" of rundown hospitals - feigning shock as if these horrors are new revelations.

The script is painfully familiar.

Scene One: Youth minister Tino Machakaire visits a relative in hospital and suddenly "discovers" the rot. He writes a letter to the so-called "listening president," urging him to come and see the crisis for himself.

But one must ask: why the letter? Is this crisis truly breaking news to a cabinet minister? Has he no direct access to the president? And more curiously - why post the letter on social media?

Was it a genuine cry for help, or a carefully staged performance to spark choreographed outrage, trigger a headline-making intervention, and manufacture praise?

Scene Two: The president obliges. Weeks later, he visits hospitals to "witness the devastation firsthand." Not long after, The Herald triumphantly reports that a shipment of life-saving medicines - for diabetes, hypertension, arthritis, and respiratory illnesses - is due by month's end.

How many people died while this theatre unfolded?

These displays of empathy are not genuine. They are orchestrated. Calculated. Cynical. For years, doctors and nurses have complained about decaying infrastructure and critical shortages. Yet Machakaire and President Emmerson Mnangagwa pretend to be stunned by a crisis they have ignored - and in many ways enabled - for years.

This is not leadership. It is performative governance.

Zimbabwe's healthcare system now mirrors the moral decay of the political elites presiding over its collapse.

These publicity stunts are more than tone-deaf - they are a deliberate attempt to whitewash years of neglect.

Lest we forget: when Mashumba wept in 2019, The Herald hailed the president's response with the headline, "President's perfect answer to doctor's tears." Government officials promised urgent action.

Yet six years on, frontline workers remain underpaid, hospitals remain under-resourced, and preventable deaths continue in plain sight.

Back then, nothing changed. Now, with talk of extending Mnangagwa's rule to 2030, we witness a sudden flurry of efforts to launder Mnangagwa's image.

Zanu-PF's logic is perverse: let systems collapse, let people suffer, then exploit their desperation for optics.

So, following grand celebrations for the Trabablas Interchange, the president takes his hospital tour - a staged spectacle meant to reinforce his image as a "listening leader."

The timing is no accident. This is the regime's playbook: perform concern, evade responsibility, and rebrand failure as visionary governance.

Predictably, his visit is followed by promises of new equipment, medicines, hospital refurbishments, and improved services.

But for Zanu-PF, these are not solutions - they are soundbites crafted for the cameras.

Because in truth, the regime cares more about managing optics than saving lives.

Their contempt for ordinary Zimbabweans is clearest in that they never set foot in the hospitals they pretend to care about.

Mnangagwa, his cabinet, and their inner circle routinely fly to South Africa, China, or Singapore for treatment - a damning indictment of the system they are responsible for.

This is not mere neglect. It is abandonment.

The ruling elite is insulated from the realities that ordinary Zimbabweans face daily. Their children don't study in collapsing classrooms.

Their spouses don't queue in under-equipped clinics. Their loved ones don't die in agony waiting for someone to "inspect" a broken ward.

Until Zimbabwe's leaders are forced to drink from the poisoned well they've dug, nothing will change. Why would it?

The Herald's 2019 coverage - once framed as a symbol of responsiveness - now reads like satire. Mashumba's tears were never met with meaningful reform. They were met with spin.

And yet, six years later, the government is suddenly on the move. We must ask: why now?

The answer is as clear: political expediency.

Zanu-PF's message to the people is unambiguous: your survival is secondary to their strategy.

This is not a blunder. It's by design.

When  Mashumba wept, the regime did not see a system in crisis - it saw a public relations opportunity. And now, after six years of calculated silence, Mnangagwa and his allies have the audacity to pose as firefighters - when they are the ones who lit the match.

Zimbabwe's healthcare inferno is not just a collapse of services. It is a collapse of conscience.

*Reward Magadhi writes on governance, corruption, and public policy in Zimbabwe.