Beaten With a Hammer: The Ordeal of Shingirai Kurebwaseka in South Africa

MAKUMBIROFA FARMS

Advocacy & Human Rights

Advocacy & Human Rights

By Collen Makumbirofa  |  Makumbirofa Farms

A community gathering point in Chegutu, Zimbabwe, where returnees and their families seek support. (Illustrative image, Makumbirofa Farms archive)

Stitches now zigzag across the side of Shingirai Kurebwaseka’s head. His right arm is in plaster. His left foot, smashed by a hammer, is bound in a splint and wrapped in a plastic bag. This is what was left of a man who crossed into South Africa simply to work and feed a family struggling at home in Zimbabwe.

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Kurebwaseka, 35, was set upon by an anti-immigrant mob during the wave of violent protests against foreign nationals that has swept across South Africa in recent weeks. His attackers accused him of being an undocumented immigrant. They beat him across his body, struck his foot and head with a hammer, and burned him with lit plastic. According to his account, they were preparing to force a burning tyre around him — the practice known as necklacing — when he managed to break free and escape.

He was rescued and hospitalised for seven days. He has since joined the tens of thousands of Zimbabweans who have fled South Africa in recent weeks, boarding a repatriation bus organised by South African authorities and arriving at the crowded reception centre in Beitbridge.

“They beat me all over, smashed my foot with a hammer, burned me with plastic papers which they had lit — and were going to put a tyre around me. I somehow still managed to escape.”

Very few who commit these crimes are ever arrested. Impunity has become the rule, not the exception, and it is this impunity that allows the violence to continue spreading — from beatings on the street to the looting of tuckshops and the intimidation of small business owners who employ or house foreign nationals. South Africa has lost something it once prided itself on: Ubuntu, the spirit of shared humanity that is supposed to bind neighbour to neighbour regardless of where they were born.

By The Numbers

South African police have confirmed at least four foreign nationals killed in attacks linked to the anti-migrant protests, though some African governments repatriating their citizens report a higher toll. More than 73,000 Zimbabweans returned home between 28 May and 5 July, according to the International Organization for Migration — roughly 54,600 self-repatriating and just over 19,000 assisted through government programmes.

These are not abstract statistics. Each number is a man like Kurebwaseka, a family like the one he left behind, a household now without its breadwinner while he heals. Makumbirofa Farms wants to invest in employment-creation projects in Chegutu, Zimbabwe, precisely so that fewer people are forced to choose between poverty at home and the danger of the migrant trail south.

“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”

Psalm 147:3

We continue to call on South African authorities to act decisively against vigilante violence, to prosecute those responsible, and to restore the rule of law that has, for too many weeks now, been ceded to the mob. And we continue to pray for Kurebwaseka’s healing, and for every migrant currently in hiding, in hospital, or on a bus home.

Editor’s Note: This account is drawn from AFP wire reporting (Kurebwaseka’s testimony given directly to AFP at the Beitbridge reception centre), corroborated across multiple outlets. Casualty and displacement figures are attributed to South African Police Service statements and IOM Zimbabwe data as cited in that reporting.