adminMorris Mtisi
CHINHOYI student kills baby . . . Pours boiling water on new-born, ran one newspaper’s headline last Monday. The editorial cited all sorts of possible reasons that led to the gothic horror story of unparalleled infanticide.
The story is typical news. Rumbidzai Thelma Mupatsi (18) gives birth by herself in a bathroom. She pours boiling water on the baby. The baby dies.
The mother packs the corpse in a suitcase. She is apprehended by college warden following a tip-off.
The accounting student denies murdering the new-born baby and claims the infant was still-born . . . blablabla the story rumbles on, pictures available.
This is the kind of story that is not news only, full stop.
This is one story too many which stretches far beyond typical journalism. This is not just a story which simply informs but one that must indeed teach and educate.
The process obviously then does so through a plethora of questions.
The first questions naturally interrogate the morality and sanity of the mother. Is she normal?
Is there any reason strong enough to justify the murder of an innocent new-born baby?
Indeed some commentators will quickly blame the man, in this case the businessman-boyfriend who was denying responsibility.
Indeed he is an ugly part of the story, some will say the ugliest part, fine!
There is certainly an element of truth in every opinion. This includes people who say, “Feeling pressured and cornered, young women are left with no option but to resort to abortion or baby-dumping . . . if the responsible man refuses to commit to their responsibility.”
More questions: Why does this kind of gothic horror happen on a university campus, where people believe learned young ladies and gentlemen must know better?
Why are college girls not role models of what is right only?
What is wrong with university college life style today?
Or is it the education system which is erroneous, misleading and incomplete?
Are universities only centres of academic equilibrium and factories of degrees to give to people who only have brains in their skulls but no hearts in their chest cavities?
Young men and women who think with their bottoms and libidos! Such disability can surely be seen on students like Rumbidzai. She is not the only one. This is not the last story we will hear from Chinhoyi or any other varsity.
We all talk beautifully and hopefully about our girl child and speak glowingly about our future leaders in all our programmes of development. Here is one of our future leaders, accountants and future mothers.
There is clearly something wrong with our society today and clearly abnormal with our universities. How does an institution of highest learning exhibit the lowest standards of morality?
Instead of being models of social and cultural values good citizenship, colleges and universities ever continue to exhibit ‘‘highest’’ qualities of moral decay?
If universities and colleges are the country’s only factories of human capital and we continue to harvest the kind of product Rumbidzai is or stands for, where are we heading to as a country and as a society?
This writer is a social commentator as well as educational materials writer for this paper. No wonder the story of the Chinhoyi baby-killer is not plain news but an interesting Shakespearean tragedy!
No wonder the writer reads more than news in this gory story of a learned mother who not only kills her new born baby but boils it to death.
This is clearly not simply the story of a daylight ‘‘witch’’ who kills her own baby only, but how she does it and what time of the day.
In African voodoo science, witches are nocturnal predators, not daylight human-flesh cooks and eaters.
What’s worst and worth reflecting upon? Rumbidzai did not abort the baby.
She did not dump the baby. She boiled it to death. Very few stories of callous heartlessness, even in Elizabethan England or Shakespeare’s tragedies read beyond this cold brutality . . . too cruel anywhere.
In a typical African context, this is daylight witchcraft. No words can be more precise. Any words less than these are an unpardonable mockery of ubunthu.
Which brings me to the question, “Do colleges and universities know anything about ubunthu?”
Thirty to 40 years ago the word ‘‘university’’ conjured up a sense of ‘‘educatedness’’ in the real sense imbibing civilisation, learnedness, being degreed and knowing better.
Today it generates a picture of promiscuity, moral decay, stinking prostitution and unwanted pregnancies, abortions, baby dumping and infanticide. Cry the beloved universities!
People used to be interested in what universities could do. Today they mourn about what they cannot and are not doing. They have become places where the best and the worst for the country happen.
On one hand these are places where our best lawyers, journalists and doctors, engineers, politicians and thinkers are made, on the other hand these are places where the worst idiots in all the areas of education mentioned above are made. Wobva watoshaya kuti university dzacho dziri kumbofambasei!
Is this also why today we see many graduates who cannot thread one sensible sentence in English Language, be it in speech or writing? “Ku varsity kwaisomboendwa navana muzvina njere chete. Ko madofo akambopfuuranepi kuenda kuvhaa?” one man asked on one of the talk shows on radio?
This writer asks, “Koshazhi ne hunzvura, pfambi nepfambwi dzinotsvagei pauniversity?
We heard, we read, some saw. The story of Rumbidzai Thelma (what a beautiful set of names!) will be one for discussion and debate for a long time to come.
At the same time, we have no doubt the arm of law and the courts are doing their best to exhibit deterrent measures that will make the Chinhoyi accountant pay for her crime and teach would-be offenders a lesson.
God save Zimbabwean universities!
Online Reporter