SEKE RD ACCIDENT: Rescuing a nation in mourning

By Nelson Chamisa

RESCUING A NATION IN MOURNING
This morning, our team presented an intelligence report from the tragic Chitungwiza accident.

What happened on the 22nd of July 2025 along Seke Road must be more than just news headlines, it must become a sobering turning point for our nation.

The stark reality of the cost of systemic failure we must all take a sober pause to reflect.

As we look beyond this tragic event, we must understand more the stories around – each name, each journey, each final moment. All speak of a nation where survival itself has become a horrible nightmare.

What we have witnessed are not just human errors, man-made mistakes or technical failures, but also personal tragedies rooted in deep leadership failure, national dysfunction and collapsing infrastructure.

The story of a young couple and their child immediately describes the reality of national failure and system decay. In Chitungwiza a young couple on a normal day made what should have been a simple trip to register their child for a birth certificate, yet, that became a final moment.

The question is why must families travel across towns and cities to access such basic services? Why are such services not decentralised to local access points?

Another story of an elderly woman travelling a long distance with their young relative to collect groceries.

This is the lived reality of our broken economy it means families have to make a long trip from Murehwa to Chitungwiza just to collect groceries.

Travelling long distances for essentials, is what millions of Zimbabweans forced to do just to meet the most basic needs.

WHERE IS OUR DISASTER PREPAREDNESS AND EMERGENCY READINESS?…Where is the preservation of our national interest and national pride? The chitungwiza road accident has many lessons. The abscence of emergency facilities such as rescue cranes and cutters was the most appalling. I see we had to use social media through individuals to beg for a private owned crane. People were crying in pain under the truck, before the crane arrived! Yet in such tragedies, time of the essence. We must fix this!

We will forever be haunted by the agonising cries for help from those trapped, injured, or dying… with no adequate emergency response equipment in sight.

That pain that helplessness will haunt our collective conscience for years to come.

And all this tragedy unfolded before we even account for the series of technical failures that we live with daily:
•The Seke Road corridor is unfit for modern transport
•There is a need to uplift our enforcement with regard to road safety to include corrective measures that are regular and consistent and increase accountability.
•Emergency response services are under-resourced, under-equipped, and unable to cope.

This is the Zimbabwe we are living in. These moments must cause us to sober up, reflect deeply, and to accept this truth: things cannot go on like this.

We simply cannot keep normalising pain, loss and dysfunction.

We must emerge fron this reality, stronger and fortified, God guiding us through it all. ~nc