Story by Theophilus Chuma
The silence hanging over a burnt-out house in Eastview, Harare, tells a story too painful for words.
Charred walls stand as the last witnesses to a tragedy that has left an entire community shattered, while the lingering smell of smoke and burnt timber serves as a haunting reminder that two young lives ended where they should have felt safest, inside their own home.
Just two days earlier, the four and six-year-old siblings had been running around the yard, laughing and playing like any other children. By dawn on Monday, that laughter had been extinguished in what police are treating as a suspected case of extreme domestic violence.
The two children were allegedly burnt to death by their father in an attack that has stunned relatives, neighbours and the wider Eastview community.
What makes the tragedy even more harrowing, relatives say, is that the children had no part in the dispute that allegedly unfolded between their parents, yet they became its innocent victims.
Mr Silver Mushonga, a brother of the alleged perpetrator, recalled what would become his final encounter with the children.
“I saw him outside with the kids as I passed by. The way he was behaving towards them was disturbing. The children ran towards me as I called out to their father. I was devastated to hear this morning that they had died after allegedly being burnt by their father.”
The unimaginable loss has left relatives struggling to comprehend what could have driven such violence.
“This is quite devastating. They did not deserve to die like this. We are still shocked by what could have driven this man to be so heartless towards his family,” said the alleged perpetrator’s uncle, Mr Fanuel Dick.
For neighbours, the tragedy has become a painful reminder of the devastating toll domestic violence can take on families.
“I am a mother, and I am pained by this incident. Carrying a child for nine months is not easy, and for someone to kill his own children like this is heartbreaking,” one neighbour said.
Standing beside the gutted home, the scale of the devastation was impossible to ignore. The blackened structure, reduced to little more than scorched walls and twisted debris, bore silent testimony to the horror that unfolded inside. Several metres away, the lingering smell from the fire remained, leaving residents visibly shaken as they gathered outside the property.
Many admitted they were still struggling to process the loss of two children whose lives had been cut so brutally short.
According to another brother of the alleged perpetrator, Mr Spencer Mushonga, the family had previously lived in Munyati before separating. He said the man had recently reunited with his wife in Harare.
“He used to live in the Munyati area, but they had separated before he rejoined his wife here in Harare. Tragically, the reunion took a different path.”
Relatives say the alleged violence extended beyond the children. They claim the suspect attacked his seven-month-pregnant wife, inflicting a deep wound to her neck before allegedly turning the knife on himself.
The woman survived the attack and is receiving treatment at a local hospital. The suspected offender is also reported to be hospitalised.
As investigators piece together the events leading to one of the city’s most disturbing domestic violence incidents in recent memory, Eastview is left mourning two young lives lost in circumstances almost too horrific to comprehend. The house that once echoed with children’s voices now stands in silence, a stark reminder of how domestic violence can destroy an entire family in a matter of moments.
