‘I watched my father being butchered’

Confusion could be read on his face, having watched his father being murdered in cold blood.

When I asked him about his age, he answered: “I am 18 years old.” His mother looked at him and corrected him. “No, you were born in 1983, meaning you are 36 years old.”

The death of his father has traumatised Magunde Kunkeyani. He cannot understand how it happened and the reasons for his hacking to death, together with another relation, for being suspected to have had a hand in the death of a 17-year-old boy.

This is what happened in Nseula Village that borders Mozambique in Traditional Authority (T/A) Dambe in Neno district, where two people were last Saturday hacked to death, while  another was beaten unto unconsciousness.

 “I watched him being tied both hands and legs,” Magunde told Nation on Sunday when we visited the family at his home—38 kilometres from Neno Turn-off. 

When his father was dragged from his home—at Mkudzu Village in Mozambique—to Nseula Village, Magunde followed him.

“I wanted to reason with them…zidakanika [it failed.]

“When we arrived at Nseula Village, it was sad,” he said as he shed tears: “I saw [name withheld] going into the house, where he took a panga.” 

After some minutes, he continued explaining: “He hacked my father on the neck, and again on the forehead, then my father fell down. From there… they continued hacking him like they were killing a snake.”

He said his aunt asked the assailant to stop hacking his father, but he never listened.

“I tried also, but it never worked and we watched mpaka bambo anga adasiya kutsalima…” [until my father breathed his last].

Yona is Magunde’s younger brother. He stays in South Africa where he is working. He has been there, together with two other siblings, since two years ago.

He said he got the sad news through a WhatsApp group where someone posted a video clip of his father being hacked.

“At the beginning I didn’t know that it was my father. So, I downloaded it,” he said.

“Seconds later, I noticed it was my father. I fell down in tears drawing the attention of my other brother, who asked what had happened,” he said.

“I deleted the video, I can’t watch it again,” he said, adding: “Soon, thereafter, we called home and we were told that our father had been hacked to death.”

Yona and his other brother left South Africa the same day, with the hope of attending their father’s burial, but it was not to be as, on arrival, they learnt that he had already been buried together with [Dake] Kamenya.

Magunde said he was not allowed to carry his father’s body for burial in Mozambique.

“They dug a half-metre hole where they buried both of them. Someone helped me with a blanket to cover up my father,” he said.

Kamenya is survived by a wife and eight children while Kunkeyani is survived by a wife and seven children.