Online Reporter
IF the law still permitted capital punishment, Peter Dube, who fatally shot two men and shot and injured two women in Gweru in April 2021, would certainly have been condemned to the gallows.
On the day in question, Dube returned home and found his second wife, Nyasha Nharingo, away. She later arrived together with Shelton Chiduku, Nyaradzo Nharingo and Gamuchirai Madungwe. Nyasha tried to enter their apartment, but Dube blocked her. She sought assistance from Dube’s brother, who convinced him to open the door.
An argument erupted, and Nyasha and Nyaradzo started packing their belongings. In anger, Dube took a gun, dashed out and fatally shot Chiduku and Madungwe, who were sitting in a car. He returned to the house, opened fire on the sisters. A bullet drove into Nyasha’s cheek, exiting through the other side of her neck. He struck Nyaradzo just above her right eye, rupturing it.
Nyaradzo passed on after some months.
Dube fled to South Africa, then Eswatini, secured fake Mozambican identity papers and settled in Ireland. Irish authorities arrested him, deported him to Mozambique. Mozambique then sent him here in August last year.
The presiding High Court Judge, Justice Munamato Mutevedzi, wondered how the prosecution had not added a third murder charge on Dube.
Luckily for the fiend, and we emphasise, luckily, he escaped with two life terms for the double murder, plus 20 years for attempted murder.
In getting his two life terms, Dube joins the small club of major killers in the country who include Rodney Jindu, who murdered his two friends in Bulawayo in 2017, but beats him if we add the 20 more years he got for attempted murder.
We unreservedly condemn Dube for the extreme gun violence he committed against the defenceless men and the Nharingos. There was absolutely no reason for him to react the way he did. He only suspected that Nyasha was seeing someone else, and perhaps thought that that someone was either Shelton or Gamuchirai, which is why he attacked them.
With such callous criminals around, someone can be forgiven for regretting why the law doesn’t permit the death sentence anymore.
However, we have come to understand that vengeance, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth do not serve justice. They condemn and harden.
Criminals, however cold-blooded they can be, like Dube and Jindu, the murderer and cannibal, must be severely punished, yes, but punished humanely to demonstrate that the wider society is not as bad as they are.
Therefore, we hail the sentence that Justice Munamati pronounced on Dube. All of us only live one life, so in sentencing Dube to two life terms, plus 20 more years, the judge made it clear that the courts, and, by extension, Zimbabwean society, found his crimes thoroughly repugnant; thus, he must be locked away forever.
