By Reason Wafawarova.
(Based on an eyewitness account from Harare, received by the author on the day of the incident)
A deeply distressing incident unfolded yesterday at the intersection of Robert Mugabe Road and Inez Terrace in Harare — an incident that has left a family traumatised, children scarred, and the public asking whether this tragedy was not only foreseeable, but preventable.
I am writing this report based on a direct eyewitness account from a reader who called me from the scene shortly after it happened.
What the eyewitness says happened:
According to the eyewitness, a white Toyota GD6 with South African GP number plates turned left into Inez Terrace from Robert Mugabe Road. Inez Terrace functions as a one-way street from the Joina City direction — a fact that is poorly marked, if marked at all, and easy for even cautious drivers to miss.
Police officers immediately stopped the vehicle. The driver — a young man — did not resist, did not argue, and complied fully. He was ordered out of the vehicle and instructed to proceed to the charge office to pay a fine for driving against a one-way street.
The charge office is only a few minutes away.
The young man went, paid the fine, and returned — reasonably assuming the matter had been resolved. It had not.
While he was at the charge office, city council parking marshals clamped his vehicle, despite there being no prior outstanding parking debt and despite the fact that the vehicle had been left unattended on police instruction.
At this point, the eyewitness says the driver became visibly distressed and panicked. His young children were still inside the vehicle, waiting for him. Their mother was reportedly at the passport office, renewing her passport, unaware that her family was in danger.
The moment everything went wrong:
As the driver ran after one of the parking marshals to plead for the release of his car, chaos was unfolding nearby.
Police were engaged in a high-speed chase of commuter omnibuses and so-called mushikashika vehicles at the corner of Julius Nyerere Way and Robert Mugabe Road — a familiar cat-and-mouse scene on Harare’s streets.
During this chase, one of the smaller vehicles veered off the road. The young man was struck.
The eyewitness describes him being thrown into the air, spinning violently before his head smashed into a windscreen, after which he collapsed onto the road.
And there he lay.
Forty-five minutes on the tarmac:
According to the eyewitness, the injured man lay on the road for close to an hour.
No immediate medical evacuation. No rapid emergency response.
No swift securing of the scene to protect him from further danger.
All of this happened in full view of his children, trapped inside the vehicle, watching their father bleed on the road.
This is not a detail that can be softened. Those children will carry this image for the rest of their lives.
The questions that must be asked:
This report is not about assigning criminal guilt prematurely. It is about systems, priorities, and institutional behaviour.
And it raises urgent questions:
1. Why are one-way streets in Harare so poorly marked?
Why are traffic regulations enforced with zero tolerance but communicated with near-zero clarity? How many drivers are set up to fail at this very intersection?
2. Why was the driver ordered to leave his vehicle unattended?
Why was he not issued a ticket on the spot and allowed to proceed safely, as is common practice in many jurisdictions?
3. Why would city parking marshals clamp a vehicle left unattended on police instruction?
Is there no protocol between police and council to prevent precisely this kind of cascading harm?
4. Why does Harare policing still rely on high-speed chases in dense urban areas?
How many people must be injured or killed before it is accepted that these chases endanger more innocent lives than they protect?
5. Why was there no rapid medical response?
Why does it take 45 minutes for meaningful assistance to arrive at a major city intersection in the capital?
The unavoidable comparison: Guruve vs Harare:
This tragedy forces an uncomfortable comparison. In Guruve, villagers lived under terror as 22 people were reportedly murdered within 89 days. For weeks — and by some accounts months — there was silence, delay, vagueness, and disinterest. Families were butchered in their sleep. The nation barely noticed until late.
In Harare, by contrast, police presence is overwhelming — not to protect life, but often to chase pirate taxis, enforce minor traffic violations, and extract fines.
This is not a policing strategy. It is a misallocation of attention.
Why does the State mobilise instantly for traffic offences and bribe-prone enforcement in the capital, yet struggle to mobilise decisively when rural families are being slaughtered?
Are rural lives less urgent?
Are urban traffic fines more valuable than rural human lives?
These are not rhetorical questions. They go to the heart of what we choose to police, and why.
Tickets or trauma?
A final, simple question must be asked:
Why don’t police issue tickets and allow drivers to go, instead of forcing people to walk to charge offices and leaving vehicles dangerously parked and unattended?
What purpose does that practice serve — public safety, or revenue extraction?
Because today, that practice may have cost a man his life — and shattered the lives of his children.
This was not “just an accident”
This was a chain of failures:
• Poor road marking
• Rigid, punitive enforcement without discretion
• Lack of coordination between police and city council
• Dangerous chase culture
• Slow emergency response
Every link in that chain mattered. This incident did not have to happen.
And if it is dismissed as “unfortunate” or “unavoidable,” then the next one is already being prepared — somewhere else, for another family.
What happened yesterday at Robert Mugabe Road and Inez Terrace is not just a tragedy.
It is an indictment of priorities.
