The heart breaks for the families in Budiriro who are today mourning three precious lives lost to a completely preventable tragedy. As a healthcare professional, I know intimately the value of safeguarding human life. As a journalist, I know how easily systemic corruption hides behind convenient scapegoats. And as the cultural custodian of Harare, descending directly from King Mbari, it outrages my soul to see the people of this great city treated with such profound, lethal disrespect by the very institution meant to serve them.
The state’s arrest and denial of bail for three low-level City of Harare employees—Moses Dicko, Tinei Chihwai, and Thomas Rwakatiwana—is not justice. It is a smokescreen. To suggest that three ground-level laborers bear the sole criminal liability for a five-meter-wide death trap left gaping open for five months is an insult to the intelligence of every Zimbabwean.
Where are the bosses? Where is the administrative accountability?
An excavation site does not sit abandoned from February until June in total secrecy. To lay this entirely at the feet of three laborers is to pretend that Town House operates without a chain of command.
The Invisible Supervisors: Where were the district engineers, the site foremen, and the municipal inspectors for those 150 days? If standard health and safety audits were being conducted, this site would have been flagged within forty-eight hours, let alone five months.
The Policy Deficit: This tragedy exposes a total collapse of institutional compliance. The City of Harare possesses dedicated departments meant to govern public works and enforce safety. If these departments are not actively monitoring open trenches in high-density residential areas, their leadership is guilty of gross administrative misconduct.
The Equipment Mystery: Scarcity or Theft?
We must ask the hard questions regarding the safety barriers and warning equipment that were so tragically absent from the Budiriro site.
If these three workers were sent to excavate a deep sewage trench without being allocated the proper safety barriers, warning tape, or protective infrastructure, then they were sent to fail by their superiors. If Town House failed to procure the equipment, the criminal liability sits squarely on the desks of the procurement directors and municipal executives who authorized hazardous works without resources.
Conversely, if the equipment exists and is sitting locked away in municipal warehouses while children walk past open, water-logged pits, it reveals a murderous lack of supervisory enforcement. Either way, the guilt climbs far higher up the corporate ladder than the men holding the shovels.
A History of Institutional Negligence
This is not an isolated incident; it is a pattern of structural disregard for human life. We have seen municipal workers lose their lives to toxic gas exposure at the Firle Sewage Plant and Morton Jaffray Water Works due to a severe lack of basic protective gear. The common denominator is always the same: leadership fails to protect its workers and its citizens, and then washes its hands of the consequences.
True Accountability Demands More Names on the Indictment
As a sovereign advocate for our people and our heritage, I refuse to watch the state sacrifice three foot soldiers to shield the executives who oversee a failing municipal system. The blood of the Budiriro victims cries out for genuine justice, not a public relations exercise.
The ongoing independent investigations must look upward. We must demand to see the Directors of Works, the health and safety executives, and the top-tier administrative authorities answering for how a lethal hazard was allowed to exist under their watch for half a year. Until the bosses face the same legal jeopardy as the workers, the City of Harare will continue to treat the lives of our people as expendable.