‘He was just selling tomatoes’

– The four children of a fruit seller gunned down by Zimbabwean soldiers in post-election violence wept uncontrollably at the sight of their father lying in a casket under a baking sun.

Ishmael Kumire, 41, was one of the six victims of Wednesday’s bloody chaos, sparked when troops fired on opposition activists protesting alleged electoral fraud.

The father of four, known as “Shuz”, was buried on Saturday in the village of Chinamhora, 45km northeast of Harare, watched by 200 mourners.

His fellow vendors swept into the yard of his home, packed into a minibus emblazoned with the words “I am blessed”, alighting drumming and dancing.

Kumire’s death carries a bitter irony. According to his brother Steven Matope, the fruit seller was not among the opposition protesters angrily claiming that the ruling Zanu-PF had stolen the election. Instead, he was caught up in the violence because he had stayed at the scene of the protest to protect his fruit.

“Ishmael was a vendor, he wasn’t a political activist,” Matope said. “He supported the ruling party – but then, it’s the same party that has killed him.”

His funeral came a day after ZanuPF’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa was declared the winner of Zimbabwe’s historic elections, the first since veteran autocrat Robert Mugabe was ousted by the military last year.

Mnangagwa had hailed the polls as a chance to consign to the past Mugabe’s repressive 37-year rule, but Wednesday’s crackdown was a brutal reminder of the violence of his era.

“If the ruling party is killing the people it is supposed to govern, I don’t know who it is going to rule,” Matope added. “He was just selling his tomatoes,” he said of his brother.

Kumire’s brother-in-law Ignatious Neshava, who witnessed the shooting, said soldiers swooped on them.“I saw Ishmael on the ground, face-down. I saw a cartridge next to him and, as I tried to turn his body, a soldier pointed a gun to my head.

“How can they deploy soldiers in town, killing people for no apparent reason?” he asked, as the wooden casket was lowered into the ground. – AFP