A 79-year-old man from Igusi village in Umguza has been arrested for allegedly raping his 12-year-old granddaughter multiple times and impregnating her.
The man, whose name has been withheld to protect the identity of the minor, is an ex-convict who previously served jail time in 1992 for a similar crime: raping and impregnating his minor daughter.
Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) spokesperson in Matabeleland North Province, Inspector Glory Banda, confirmed the incident to CITE.
He said the accused committed the offence sometime in January 2024 and the matter was reported to the police on March 6, 2024. Said Insp Banda:
The man raped the minor on four different occasions. When he did it the first time, he threatened that if she spoke out he would kill her.
The minor reported the matter to her grandmother but she was dismissed. The grandmother claimed that the man was no longer sexually active.
The matter later came to light through the school and a report was made to the police. It was reported on March 6, 2024, but the man fled.
Inspector Glory Banda confirmed that the man was apprehended on March 9, 2024, following an extensive search. He said:
It is quite worrying that a community can have such vile people who destroy the lives of children like this. This man committed a similar offence to his daughter.
He would come and fetch her from school, claiming that she had to look after her siblings because he would have to attend to other things.
On the way home he would rape her. This happened repeatedly until the daughter fell pregnant.
A community member who spoke to CITE about the man’s previous arrest decades ago said they started noticing some changes in the man’s daughter and upon talking to her, she disclosed her ordeal. Said the villager:
She was taken to the police and went for health checkups and they found out that she was pregnant.
He was released from prison and came back to his home. Now he has done the same thing to his granddaughter.
If it wasn’t for the school authorities that held a programme to speak about child abuse, no one would have spoken out about this.
I hope that the community learns a lesson from this. Honestly, someone must have seen or suspected something while the abuse was going on.
But no one spoke out and now this man has impregnated another minor. I just hope the community would be more aware of such dangers within communities so that minors can be protected.
Zimbabwe has been grappling with a distressing epidemic of child sexual abuse, particularly the rape of minors.
Between January and September 2022, at least 220 Zimbabwean minors fell victim to rape, according to former Women’s Affairs Minister Sithembiso Nyoni.
These chilling numbers were revealed during the national commemorations of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence.
These figures represent reported cases, but many similar incidents likely go unreported due to societal pressures and the desire to preserve family reputations.
Tragically, this pattern of abuse often occurs within families, where parents or guardians are either perpetrators or facilitators of the abuse, sometimes concealing these crimes.
