IT is around 5pm, classes are over, the school office is about to close and a man rushes into the school head’s office, breathless.
“There has been an accident,” he says.
“A commuter omnibus has run over one of your girls.
“In fact, she was swept beneath the commuter omnibus.”
This was a parent who had come to pick up his own daughter from the school, but had witnessed something horrific.
“Would this girl be still alive after being swept beneath the commuter omnibus?” the school head asked.
“Ah yes, she is still alive, she was still kicking her limbs,” the man says.
“These commuter omnibuses have been knocking down our girls and one of these days, they will kill one of them,” she laments as she rises and gathers her keys to leave the office.
She hurries towards the accident scene at corner Leopold Takawira Street and Park Lane.
Another Good Samaritan accosts her.
“We called an ambulance, but did not get a response, so we asked a soldier who was on the scene to take her to Parirenyatwa Hospital,” he says.
The headmistress hurries on, on foot, leaving her car behind, knowing well there would be nowhere to park the vehicle in that jungle of commuter omnibuses.
She hopes to bring back the injured girl to her car and rush her to hospital.
There is a huge crowd at the scene of the accident.
She is shown to a car and as she tries to open the door, someone says: “Sorry, the girl has died.”
Still in pain and shock, she discovers two other girls have been injured by the same commuter omnibus and an ambulance is already preparing to take them to hospital.
An adult male, also run-over by the marauding commuter omnibus, is taken to hospital in the same ambulance.
The headmistress follows the ambulance to West End Hospital where the girls receive treatment.
The following day another schoolgirl comes with leg injuries, a victim of the same commuter omnibus.
This is the story of how Joslin Gomba, a Form Four pupil at Girls’ High School, Harare, died on May 23 2016; also how her three classmates were injured as the four walked home from school on that fateful Monday.
They were walking along the pavement on Takawira Avenue towards Samora Machel Avenue when a commuter omnibus driver ran amok, knocking them down from behind.
The commuter omnibus was driving in the wrong direction.
The commuter omnibus menace is well-known in Zimbabwe, particularly in Harare where it is the epitome of lawlessness.
Commuter omnibuses have run over people, children included, and the drivers specialise in running away once they injure or kill a person.
In the case of Gomba, the driver also ran away.
Commuter omnibuses prowl around Harare with impunity, picking up passengers as and when they wish.
They claim whole streets and neighbourhoods, wherever they get the strong smell of a coin; for them anywhere is a ‘designated pick-up point’.
They do this in broad daylight and in full view of law enforcement agents.
How can Zimbabweans continue to be so vulnerable when we have a robust police force, a judiciary that is second to none and statutes to defend the right to life?
Gomba, a bright 17-year old, would have achieved a lot for herself, family and the nation, but this will never be because a shambolic pick-up point for commuter omnibuses has been allowed to thrive at the doorstep of two high schools, Girls High School and Queen Elizabeth.
This pick-up point, which vanahwindi claim is a rank, was a disaster waiting to happen.
The careless pile-up of commuter omnibuses, the litter and clutter, the touts shouting at and insulting schoolgirls as they pass by is the order of the day.
Ndiyo here Zimbabwe yataichemera?
There is nowhere to hide, the commuter omnibuses rule the roost.
Who or what is going to reassure the young girls at Girls High School and Queen Elizabeth that they can be safe, that Harare is a home they can be safe in.
Zimbabwe has got a soul, it is founded on ideals.
It is not a jungle in which anyone is free to apply his/her own laws as long as it enables one to make a dollar.
If we can keep our children safe only as long as they are behind the school fence, if mothers and fathers live in fear that their children might never get back home from school, then something has gone disastrously wrong in this beautiful land of ours.
If obscenity and foul language are so easily let loose to sting the girl child, diminishing their innocence and dignity, then Zimbabwe’s girl child is not protected.
We have land, we have soil, we have a Zimbabwe which is our only home.
If we cannot be safe in Zimbabwe, where shall we go?
Commuter omnibus drivers and touts give hell to travellers, they are totally obnoxious, but when it comes to the life of minors, especially the girl child, the wrath of Zimbabwe must come forth, arise and protect its children.
Zimbabwe yaramba zvamadhisinyongoro!