Before the family of Kelvin Tinashe Choto knew that he had been killed, social media in Zimbabwe were circulating a photograph of his battered body lying on the reception counter of a local police station. Angry protesters had left him there.
The 22-year-old father of one was shot in the head, one of at least a dozen people killed since Monday in a violent crackdown by security forces on protests against a dramatic increase in fuel prices.
Dozens of Zimbabweans have been shot. Others say they have been hunted down in their homes at night, with soldiers and masked people in plainclothes dragging them away, severely beating them and leaving them for dead.
Photo: AP
Some are activists and labor leaders. Others, like Choto, have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
A captain at a small soccer club in Chitungwiza, a town southeast of the capital, Harare, he had been planning to travel to neighboring South Africa next week to look for better-paying teams.
“He was our future,” said his father, Julius Choto, as the family buried him on Saturday.
Teammates chanted the team’s war cry, handed the family his jersey and carried his coffin.
“He was disciplined, respectable and nonviolent. All he cared for was his football. He was a very good footballer,” his father said.
His son had been watching the protests from a soccer field, “some meters away from the action,” on Tuesday when he was gunned down.
“Maybe they thought he was an [opposition] activist, since he was wearing a red Manchester United jersey,” his father told reporters.
The family only discovered his body the following morning at a local mortuary.
“I have been robbed,” his father said, crying. “He was my only son and his future was bright. I have been robbed by the state.”
Such accounts have quickly undermined the faith of many in the government of Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who was briefly cheered when he took over after the ouster of former Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe in late 2017.
Since then, the country’s already staggering economy has weakened even more.
Growing frustration over rising inflation, a severe currency crisis and fuel lines that stretch for miles finally snapped after Mnangagwa announced a week ago that fuel prices would more than double, making gasoline in Zimbabwe the most expensive in the world.
Civic leaders called for Zimbabweans to stay at home for three days in protest. Other people took to the streets. Some looted, in desperation or anger. The military was called in and with Mnangagwa leaving on an extended overseas trip, Zimbabwean Vice President Constantino Chiwenga was left in charge. A crackdown began.
In what critics have called an attempt to cover up abuses, the government in the past few days has imposed Internet shutdowns across the country, ordering telecoms to block popular social media apps or everything at once.
The shutdowns have given security forces cover to commit violations “away from the glare of the international community,” said Dewa Mavhinga, southern Africa director for Human Rights Watch.
The reports of abuses come as Mnangagwa prepares to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, appealing for foreign investment in a country he says is “open for business.”
At one hospital in Harare alone, the waiting room and corridors were packed with injured people.
“They came at the middle of the night, kicking doors and throwing tear gas to force us out. Once they had rounded all up men in the area, they assaulted us using motorbike chains,” one man said.
Another man with burnt hands said he and others had been forced to put out burning tires with their bare hands.
They both spoke condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
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