When the Dust Settles

On Blame, Grief, and the Meaning of Tragedy

This is a tribute to the lives lost and those affected by the tragic road accident on the Chitungwiza highway on 22 July 2025. May memory live on.

Seventeen lives were lost. Three others remain in hospital. A haulage truck collided with a commuter vehicle on a stretch of the Harare-Chitungwiza highway near Hunyani bridge. This is one of those roads where velocity is the norm and attention is divided between potholes, pressure, and prayer. The facts are still filtering in: the truck is said to have veered off the road, hit two pedestrians, entered the opposite lane, and crushed the commuter vehicle beneath it. Some mention a smaller vehicle that may have braked suddenly ahead, setting off a chain reaction. But beyond the facts, there is the grief. And beyond the grief, the questions.

Public conversation seems eager to find fault. Who was driving carelessly? Whose vehicle was not roadworthy? Who should have yielded? Who misjudged? These are valid questions. Yet also insufficient. Because what happened on that road is not simply about a single bad decision. It is about a system too fast, too fragile, and too unwilling to reckon with its own design.

Speed as a Structure, Not an Accident

There is a profound difference between an individual's mistake and a society's momentum. I write with the clarity of a son who lost his father in similar fashion to how the family of the couple (the pedestrians) has lost both mother and father, just a different stretch of the highway. This accident, like so many, did not take place in a vacuum. It took place within a broader culture of haste, pressure, and infrastructural strain. The road itself, the speed norms, the pressure to meet delivery targets, the passenger overload, and the exhaustion of drivers all coalesce into a fragile balance, until something snaps.

Imagine, instead, a world where we still rode horses. No speed beyond what a living creature could carry. No machinery that drags metal against flesh at 100 km/h. The scale of damage in an accident would be different, not because people were wiser, but because the system itself limited the consequences of error.

So the question becomes: can we have machines of power without systems of care? Can we amplify human capability without also amplifying our responsibility?

Blame and the Burden of Knowing

Blame feels productive. It gives us a villain, a name, a closure. But tragedy is rarely that clean. If a driver made a mistake, then they are human. If a road is poorly maintained, then it's the road authority, council, the city, or even the state. If the vehicles were overloaded, then it's economic, the driver or the owner takes the hit. There is always someone to point a finger at.

Blame isolates; it distances us from what matters the most. Wisdom connects, but who seeks it in moments like these? Yet it asks not just who failed, but what system allowed failure to be so fatal?

Perhaps our culture's desire to single out individuals is not strength, it's avoidance. It absolves us from collective reflection. It shields us from the harder truth: that we're all part of a machine that moves too fast for its own safety. And that we may need to slow down, not just on the road, but in our lives, in our ambitions, and in our technologies.

What If It Was Destiny?

There is another view, often whispered when logic gives way to mystery, the view of fate. Of the divine. That some deaths come not as accidents, but as appointments written in time's ledger.

As my name says it all, “kufa hakurotwe”, it just comes.

From a biblical lens, even Jesus, who came to die, only revealed the manner and moment of his death when the time had come. Until then, it remained veiled in uncertainty; he had to die at someone's hand! And even then, he said:

"Do not weep for me. Weep for yourselves and for your children." (Luke 23:28)

It was not a dismissal of grief, but a redirection. He knew that death, while personal, also reveals collective wounds. When tragedy strikes, we mourn the life lost. But we also mourn our own helplessness. Our illusions of control. Our inability to guarantee safety even with laws, prayers, and precautions. Because, as the saying goes, like taxes, death is certain.

To believe in fate is not to deny responsibility. It is to admit that we are never fully in charge. It is to be humble in the face of the unknown. And sometimes, that humility may be the beginning of wisdom.

Mourning, a form of Memory, Protest, and Love

What, then, is the purpose of mourning?

It is not merely sadness. Mourning is the body's refusal to let meaning be buried with the dead. It is love, still speaking. It is memory resisting erasure. It is also protest; against the senselessness of loss, against the haste of modernity, against the quiet normalisation of preventable deaths.

Even Jesus wept for Lazarus, knowing he would raise him. Mourning is not about finality—it's about acknowledgement. It dignifies the life lived. It reminds us that we are not made of steel and data, but of breath and soul.

What Does Closure Really Mean?

"Closure" is a word we often rush toward. We want the ache to end—the questions to be settled. But closure is not a switch, it is a slow integration.

To heal does not mean to forget.

To forgive does not mean to erase.

To continue does not mean to conclude.

True closure is not about moving on—it's about moving forward with meaning.

Sometimes that comes with justice. Sometimes with ritual. Sometimes only with time.

Who Grieves and Who Stands Guard?

In moments of crisis, society must allow for many roles. Some will weep. Some will bury the dead. Some will organise. Some will testify. Some will rage at the injustice. Others will remain calm, keeping the village running.

All are needed.

Grief, too, has its seasons. And there is no right duration. No expiry date on pain. We must be patient with those who grieve loudly and those who grieve in silence. Because to mourn is also to love. And to love is never wasted.

What Should We Learn?

We learn, above all, that life is fragile.

We learn that our systems—of transport, of economics, of governance—must evolve not only in power but in compassion.

We learn that mourning is not a weakness but a form of memory.

And we learn that blame may satisfy, but the future is built on reflection.

So, when the dust settles, may we not only look for culprits, because if we look for an elephant in a tree, we will find it.

Let us look for lessons. Let us build a world that remembers, not only the names of the dead, but the values that could have kept them alive.

Let us not only bury bodies, but raise questions.

And in our answers, let us be bold enough to imagine a slower, wiser, more humane future.