Fidelis Munyoro
Chef Court Reporter
It was a case steeped in heartbreak – a tragic tableau of young lives thrust into violence and a scathing indictment of adults who should have known better.
When Justice Emilia Muchawa delivered her verdict in the High Court last recently, acquitting a 17-year-old boy accused of stabbing another teenager to death at a raucous New Year’s Eve gathering, her words struck like a hammer.
“This was a heartbreaking murder case to preside over,” she said, her voice heavy with the weight of what had unfolded. “The absurdity of this case lies in the ages of the deceased, the accused and the witnesses. Their involvement in criminal proceedings such as these has been deeply concerning.”
The trial laid bare a chilling picture. Children as young as 13 loitering outside Lakers Night Club at 3 a.m, their parents nowhere in sight, their vulnerability and innocence exploited by adults who failed to protect them.
It told the story of Nyasha Chagunda, a 16-year-old boy who suffered a fatal stab wound during a moment of chaos, and it also told a story of societal failure.
At the heart of the judge’s fury was the nightclub itself.
“Lakers Night Club was irresponsible in giving minor children access to its facilities,” Justice Muchawa declared in a damning rebuke. “It is both astounding and disappointing that children aged 13, 14, 16 and 17 years were outdoors at 0300 hours on the morning of the New Year. Not only were they outdoors in the dead of the night, but they were essentially loitering at a nightclub.”
The fatal stabbing occurred at Kuwadzana 6 Shopping Centre in Harare. Nyasha Chagunda was knifed in the stomach, his intestines protruding from a 3 cm wound. He died from haemorrhagic shock later that day at Sally Mugabe Hospital.
Yet the ensuing trial was perhaps even more tragic, exposing a web of unreliable witnesses, shoddy policing and a harrowing neglect of children’s welfare.
The State accused 17-year-old Mthandazilwa Gumede of stabbing Chagunda, alleging the attack stemmed from an argument over a hat belonging to Gumede’s younger brother.
Key witness Takudzwanashe Chaurura claimed he had seen Gumede use an okapi knife—but his testimony disintegrated under scrutiny.
Chaurura admitted, after cross-examination, that he had not actually seen the stabbing.
His account about where the knife had been carried shifted too often to be credible. And crucially, the alleged murder weapon was never recovered, despite a New Year’s crowd of 50 or more milling about when the stabbing unfolded.
In a dramatic turn, defence witness Leon Matopo, just 14 years old, painted an entirely different picture. He testified that Chagunda had been part of a mob assaulting a boy in a red T-shirt before suddenly clutching his stomach and collapsing.
Leon had seen two men in white Muslim attire pass by Chagunda moments before he fell, but he had not seen anyone wield a knife. His harrowing testimony left a mark when he told the court he had been so traumatised by the sight of Chagunda’s intestines that he could not eat for four days.
Justice Muchawa found Leon’s evidence credible, commending his consistency under “gruelling cross-examination” and his refusal to guess at events he had not seen. “He had no personal interest in the case, no animosity or incentives,” the judge said emphatically.
Ultimately, with two conflicting accounts on the table and no physical evidence tying Gumede to the stabbing, the State failed to meet the high burden of proof.
Gumede was acquitted.
But for Justice Muchawa, the case was far more than an exercise in legal technicalities. It was a reckoning for a society complicit in the events of that fateful night. She invoked the African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child,” as she lashed out at adults for their catastrophic abdication of responsibility.
“It cannot be ignored that all the adults in the vicinity lacked the mindfulness, compassion and wisdom to instruct these children to go home,” Justice Muchawa charged. “It goes without saying that all the minor children milling around had unfettered access into the bar.”
Her rebuke landed especially hard on the nightclub itself. Lax security and reckless management had turned Lakers Night Club into an unsafe playground for children.
Both Gumede, then 16 or 17, and his 13-year-old brother had testified that they freely entered the bar.
The judge also took aim at the police investigation, describing it as rife with irregularities. The treatment of Angel Maya, another minor witness whose statement was mired in ethical concerns, left the judge visibly frustrated.
The investigating officer allowed the accused’s aunt to sign as Maya’s guardian, rather than securing her actual guardian’s oversight. Maya later disowned the police statement entirely.
“The investigating officer acted irresponsibly,” Justice Muchawa said bluntly, calling for a full inquiry into how statements involving minors are recorded.
For Chagunda’s grieving family, the outcome is an unspeakable burden. There is no closure—just the bitter truth that his killer may never be known. Yet for Justice Muchawa, the verdict was a necessary reflection of justice’s most sacred principle.
“We believe that the accused’s defence is sufficient in that there is a reasonable possibility that it may be substantially true,” she concluded. “This means the State has dismally failed to muster the requisite threshold to prove beyond reasonable doubt.”
In the end, this case was about much more than guilt or innocence. It was a mirror held up to a society that failed its youngest and most vulnerable members.
And for the judge, it was also a warning—not just to revellers and their families, but also to establishments like Lakers Night Club, where the next tragedy might be incubating.
How many more funerals, one wonders, before the adults finally wake up?
