Senate President Edna Madzongwe’s guard commits Suicide
A guard, who was being accused of killing a man at Senate President Edna Madzongwe’s newly acquired Stockdale Farm, this week shot and killed himself in a toilet at the farm.
Madzongwe – a top official in President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF party – has controversially acquired Stockdale Farm after muscling out its original owner Peter Etheredge.
Nineteen-year-old Innocent Mbofana on Monday used a 12-ball-double-barrel shoot gun to shoot himself in the head and died on the spot.
Sources from in the south western farming town of Chegutu said Mbofana’s body was taken to Chegutu hospital mortuary a few hours after he committed suicide.
“He had initially run away after the death of the man they accused of stealing oranges in May and he only returned last week. The police officers at the farm tried to detain him but he escaped and went ahead to shot himself,“ said a source who declined to be named.
A mortuary attendant at Chegutu hospital only identified as Ngwenya confirmed receiving Mbofana’s body on Monday afternoon before it was released to the relatives on Wednesday for burial in rural Chakari near Kadoma.
“The postmortem that was done was just external as the gun shot wound was there for everyone to see. The relatives also did not have money for the more expensive autopsy. Eyes popped out of the eyeholes. It seemed as if he had shot himself from under the chin and the bullet came out through the forehead,“ said the mortuary attendant.
No comment could be obtained from the police last night.
The sources said the family only managed to get US$30 from the Senate President in order for them to buy fuel for the truck that was to be used to carry the body for burial.
Violence erupted at Stockdale Farm in April resulting in the death of the unidentified man at the hands of Madzongwe’s farm guards.
A Justice for Agriculture spokesperson alleges that the man was taken to the citrus pack shed where he was tortured for most of the night.
The following morning the man was released by the guards (no police report was made of the theft), and the body was found near the entrance to the farm.
A report was made to Chegutu police and three of Madzongwe’s guards, plus two Stockdale former employees, were picked up by the police. No arrests have so far been made.
Efforts to get a comment from Madzongwe proved fruitless as she was not answering her mobile phone.
Zimbabwe, also grappling with its worst ever economic crisis, has since 2000 when land reforms began, relied on food imports and handouts from international food agencies mainly due to failure by resettled black peasants to maintain production on former white farms.
Poor performance in the mainstay agricultural sector has also had far reaching consequences as hundreds of thousands of people have lost jobs while the manufacturing sector, starved of inputs from the sector, is operating at around 10 percent of capacity.
International donors and Western governments have – on top of other conditions – made it clear that hey would not consider giving aid to President Robert Mugabe’s unity government with Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai while farm invasions continue.