Ginimbi tragedy: Right class, Wrong lessons

For the past few days, social media has been awash with several theories of how and why Ginimbi and his friends died. There are several conspiracy theories and speculations being put across and it has come to my attention that most of those theories generally conclude that the quartet death was not natural and self-inflicted but something to do with either spiritual forces or politically motivated assassination.

When a poor man like Hardlife Zvirekwi or Partson Jaure goes out to enjoy some drinks and drugs with friends, drives home at high speed, gets involved in a fatal accident, we hear nasty comments like "vanedzungu vafana ava, vanodhakwa stereki ivava apa vachida kudriver, he was reckless, vanoonererwa nemota, motikari haidi manyemwe etc etc" but when a rich guy does exactly the same thing and end up in the same situation  people go "aurawa , anga akuda kupinda mupolitics, mhiko yake yanga yaexpire, anga achidzingirirwa bla bla,"

Ginimbi has a flit of flashy fast cars if not flashiest and fastest cars in the world which in no doubt reflect his need and appetite for speed and classy. He was a heavy drinker who partied almost every day. We all saw the video in which he was leaving for the party confirming that he was going to drink heavily. We all saw some previous videos of his reckless and speeding habits in the Zimbabwean dangerous narrow roads, always putting himself and others at risk. Today, karma catches up with him, we ignore all this and point fingers on other things as if he is the first person to die from over excitement, drunken driving, over speeding and recklessness.  We surprisingly choose to ignore eyewitness accounts that he was speeding and tried to overtake several cars without considering oncoming vehicles, we choose to implicate other things.

Why do we surely think Ginimbi was a superhuman, a man who could be that reckless, break all the rules possible and get away with it entirely. Have we ever considered that his behaviour and habits on the road was just a ticking time bomb? Don't you think we are in the right class but learning wrong lessons from this event. Instead of learning not to drink and drive, to respect other drivers on the road, to maintain stipulated speed limits and to be responsible, we are learning the dangers of being into politics, disadvantages of being wealthy and a lot of unnecessary issues. What is it that Ginimbi had, to be considered as a genius on the road who can never crush no matter how fast he goes, how drunk he is and how reckless he is driving when we have seen specially trained formular one drivers, sobber and driving special cars in specially designed speed roads crushing? There are a lot of reckless and irresponsible drivers like him who will keep doing what they are doing because they are learning wrong lessons yet they are in the right class.

I have seen popular figures now starting to complain about the state of roads and poor service deliveries, pointing out that fire brigade did not show up. How many people have died in fire related accidents due to serious glitches with the fire people? How many buildings were razed down due to lack of fire extinguishing equipment in Harare this year alone? Now that its Ginimbi, the same person who would pop champaign when poor people were complaining about all this, we realise it just now. These are the kind of lessons we should learn from this class. When a poor man complains, never ignore, thinking you will never need what he is crying for one day. When poor people were marching for the better, including demanding some fire extinguishing machines, he was partying, thinking he was too rich to get involved in poor people activities. Little did he know the same fire truck meant to extinguish a poor man's old 323 after catching fire due to a leaking fuel tank was probably going to help extinguish his top of the range car, saving the beautiful girls. Surely we are learning the wrong lessons.

Life is important to everyone. We don't need a popular person to die so that we realise how bad things have gone. If the same attention and outcry people are giving to this event about the state of our country was the same attention given to everyone else who died in similar situation before them, maybe that would have given pressure to authorities to have other things fixed that at least could have helped  him and his friends. We must learn to take every loss seriously because life of a rich man is as important as that of a poor one. That is why he was thrown in the same police metal coffin used to ferry every other corpse. Right now everyone is focused on reckless Ginimbi and how his car was burnt: no one talks about the poor people in the Honda fit who had the right of way. We don't even know their names and what happened to them afterwards. We are busy learning how the man got rich. These are wrong lessons…

We have heard parents and relatives complaining about the victim lives. Its clear they are not happy at all especially with the way they chose to disrespect and disobey them. We need to get such life lessons from this tragic event. No matter how rich or popular we get, lets respect and listen to our parents. They carry our blessings every time. Imagine a farther seeing his son driving by everyday without a word. When he goes to the shops someone shows him videos of the same son giving away huge sums of money to naked ladies twerking. A son who cannot spare a few minutes to stop and greet his dad but gets time to sit in front of a computer conducting twerking competitions online. When bad things happen to the son, we ignore all this and blame outside forces. These are the lessons we should all learn. (exodus 20vs12)

Its very unfortunate and fortunate that sometimes we are forced to learn the hard way. 2020 has provided our nation with a couple of good lessons. We saw Zororo Makamba dying unnecessarily, yet his dad is involved in looting resources meant to develop the country including medical facilities. The questions are, as a nation, are we really learning the right lessons from these classes or we chose to divert real issues and come up with our own theories that does not help us in any way. Why is it that when something happens, we rush to cook up some stories ignoring facts on the ground? Speculations are allowed but should they really drive us that far?  

Garikai Mananje
Human right activist
https://twitter.com/GarikaiMananje