Opinion / Columnist
While the world moves On, Guruve is burying its dead
22 hrs ago |
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As the world argues over geopolitics such as the Venezuela-United States standoff, the M23 Democratic Republic of Congo conflict and as Harare, barely 150 kilometres away, obsesses over the 2026 national budget or the design of the national football team's jersey, Guruve is counting bodies. Quietly. Painfully. Almost unnoticed.
In Guruve, death no longer arrives as an accident or misfortune. It comes deliberately, in the dead of night, in forms so cruel they overwhelm language itself. A two-year-old child, with a future still untouched, was killed by a man she had never wronged. A mother who left her children with her mother returned home to a nightmare, the smell of decay announcing that her mother and two children were already gone. In Negomo, a woman cried out for help to her son, unaware that he had been killed before her voice reached him. At Ona Mapeto, children survived only because they hid, listening as their mother and four relatives were murdered.
This is not just a crime. It is terror. It is the slow normalisation of horror in a community that is being conditioned to live with fear. Guruve is no longer asking if another death will occur, but who will be next.
There are moments when a nation must pause and confront itself. This should be one of them. When children are butchered, when entire families are wiped out, and when communities sleep with one eye open, something has fundamentally broken.
The devil, some say, is feasting in Guruve. But evil thrives most where there is neglect and indifference. Where killers believe the night will protect them. Where mourning becomes routine.
Each death sends a shockwave through Guruve, a warning that safety is no longer guaranteed and innocence offers no protection. These are not just isolated tragedies; they are messages of terror that fracture the collective imagination and leave scars that will long outlive the funerals.
The world will continue to move on. Budgets will be debated. Jerseys will be redesigned. Headlines will change. But Guruve will remember. It will remember the children who never grew up, the mothers who never came home.
The land that once cradled the legacy of Nyatsimba Mutota has been turned into a bloodbath. Homes are no longer sanctuaries, they are crime scenes. From the Shinje River to the Dande River, the soil is stained with the blood of the innocent, brutally massacred. What should have been spaces of safety and heritage have become theatres of terror, where life is extinguished without warning and grief travels faster than dawn.
Mhondoro dze Guruve maendepi ? Masvikiro eGuruve muripi?
Vatendi minamato yenyu iripi ?
Written by Kudakwashe Chakabva in his personal capacity as a resident of Guruve.
In Guruve, death no longer arrives as an accident or misfortune. It comes deliberately, in the dead of night, in forms so cruel they overwhelm language itself. A two-year-old child, with a future still untouched, was killed by a man she had never wronged. A mother who left her children with her mother returned home to a nightmare, the smell of decay announcing that her mother and two children were already gone. In Negomo, a woman cried out for help to her son, unaware that he had been killed before her voice reached him. At Ona Mapeto, children survived only because they hid, listening as their mother and four relatives were murdered.
This is not just a crime. It is terror. It is the slow normalisation of horror in a community that is being conditioned to live with fear. Guruve is no longer asking if another death will occur, but who will be next.
There are moments when a nation must pause and confront itself. This should be one of them. When children are butchered, when entire families are wiped out, and when communities sleep with one eye open, something has fundamentally broken.
The devil, some say, is feasting in Guruve. But evil thrives most where there is neglect and indifference. Where killers believe the night will protect them. Where mourning becomes routine.
The world will continue to move on. Budgets will be debated. Jerseys will be redesigned. Headlines will change. But Guruve will remember. It will remember the children who never grew up, the mothers who never came home.
The land that once cradled the legacy of Nyatsimba Mutota has been turned into a bloodbath. Homes are no longer sanctuaries, they are crime scenes. From the Shinje River to the Dande River, the soil is stained with the blood of the innocent, brutally massacred. What should have been spaces of safety and heritage have become theatres of terror, where life is extinguished without warning and grief travels faster than dawn.
Mhondoro dze Guruve maendepi ? Masvikiro eGuruve muripi?
Vatendi minamato yenyu iripi ?
Written by Kudakwashe Chakabva in his personal capacity as a resident of Guruve.
Source - Kudakwashe Chakabva
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