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Freedom Mupanedemo recently in Mberengwa

TUCKED near two hillocks in Jona Village, Mbuyanehanda area, Mberengwa District, is an expansive blue homestead.

Grass-thatched round huts dot around an affluent red-roofed house that completes this unique and imposing homestead — the countryside home of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Minister, Lieutenant-General (Retired) Sibusiso Moyo who died on Wednesday.

This is the homestead that nurtured the boy “Busi” Moyo who became the face of the New Dispensation and a darling for the people of Mberengwa and Mbuyanehanda area in particular when he announced on national television the famous November 2017 military intervention which gave birth to the Second Republic.

The eerie silence that engulfed this otherwise blissful homestead on a normal day and the shaking of heads in grief by villagers give an impression of a village and rather, a community in mourning.

One by one the villagers, in wet attire and masks trickle into the homestead braving the heavy rains pounding the sticky red soils in the area to convey their condolences to the Moyo family following the untimely passing on of their national and local hero.

Busi, as the late national hero was affectionately known in Mbuyanehanda died due to Covid-19 complications last Wednesday morning but word only began to filter here last Thursday. The sad news came as a shock to the locals who were looking up to the man who had become everyone’s icon.

Visibly troubled, the villagers just nod their hands at a distance as they convey their condolences, forsaking the traditional shaking of hands with the bereaved family due to Covid-19 restrictions. They look shaken by the death of the national hero and their village hero and appear even more frightened by the deadly pandemic now after it robbed them of their darling. They have one common wish — to have their hero fly past the village for one last time before being interred at his final resting place, the National Heroes Acre.

They all seem determined to know of the funeral arrangements and whether they will be allowed a chance to see their hero for one last time even in the midst of the ravaging Covid-19 pandemic.

“We are shaken, we are speechless, how come this Covid-19 thing decided to hit us hard by taking the man who we were all looking at in Mberengwa and Mbuyanehanda in particular. We are terrified,” mourned the local councillor Misheck Gomesh Zhou who was among the villagers gathered at the late minister’s homestead.

He said the Mberengwa community wished their hero, who was in constant touch with his roots and had lined up a number of developmental projects in Mbuyanehanda, could fly past his village.

“We were with him at the New Year and he met all the 37 councillors in Mberengwa. He gave us presents of a smartphone each. He told us that the reason why he decided to give us smartphones was to enhance communication with him as the local Senator.

“Senator Moyo told us then to use the smartphones to communicate problems we would be facing and with the rains we are experiencing we have been communicating with him, sending pictures of damaged roads. How wonderful was that and what a blow to lose him at this critical moment,” said Clr Zhou.

A local village head, Mr Teerai Siyakwazi said the late Minister Moyo was so passionate about development that he was about to complete his water reticulation project in Mbuyanehanda area.

“He was a man of action and development was what he wanted to see in his area. He had put up a water project in Mbuyanehanda. There is now running tap water at Mbuyanehanda High School at Negove Clinic and the Mission which was done by our late son. He was now extending the project to individual homesteads and we have a number of them now with tap water,” he said.

Mr Siyakwazi said Minister Moyo had also installed internet services at Mbuyanehanda High School and the local clinic.

“People are now accessing Internet at Mbuyanehanda Business Centre and all this was because of Busi. He was a man of little words but a man of action. We will dearly miss him,” he said.

Mrs Aleta Moyo, wife to the late Minister Moyo’s bother Bothwell, said the Moyo family had lost a pillar.

“He was a very quiet man, a loving husband but very pragmatic and unifier. He was passionate about development and every now and then he would ask my husband, his brother, to identify areas which needed urgent attention and they were doing the water project in the Mbuyanehanda area connecting critical institutions like the local clinic, school and the business centre to the tap. We are devastated by his death,” she said.

Mrs Moyo said although funeral arrangements were being organised by the State, every mourner coming to pay their condolences wished he could be brought down to his village so they could pay their last respects.

“It’s a challenge that the death is Covid-19 related but it has been everyone’s wish here that they see him so they pay their last respects,” she said.