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standards, at his rural home but he abandoned it for the bright lights of Harare.
He started his own flower business, but squandered the profits for the love of the wise waters.

Mazanza’s relatives have tried to assist him, offering him accommodation and meals so that he can live a normal life but all has been in vain.
Known as Murehwa, many have brushed shoulders with him sometimes in his drunken stupor along the First Street Mall, Sam Nujoma Street, Jason Moyo Avenue and George Silundika Avenue in Harare’s Central Business District but this has become his life.

Mazanza has decided to throw out his destiny to work and live on the streets.
It is widely believed that people are drawn to the streets because of domestic problems or financial constraints but this is not the case with Murehwa.

A light-skinned, heavy-set man with a pot-belly and drowsy eyes, if you do not see him sleeping recklessly on the pavements, people can easily recognise him with his rugged slow pace, a longing stare and a heavy stench of beer fumes mixed with sweat.
Murehwa has been on the streets living the life of a vagrant for more than five years.

However, a chance to talk to him brings out a different person quite eloquent in his spoken English while he claims to be more than what meets the eye.

He claims to be a father to two children, although his relatives dismiss the claims.
“I have two children staying with my married sister. I am from Chikwaka in Goromonzi,” he tells anyone who cares to listen or asks him.
“I was born in 1974 and went to Bosha Secondary School but I had to leave school prematurely in 1991 when my father died,” he said in a recent interview with The Herald.

Murehwa, with a distant look of a person coming to his senses after his Rip van Winkle years laments the missed opportunities.
He says he had a decent job and family and all was lost when he found himself on the hard and grey pavements of Harare where he has endured both the cold and bitter winter seasons and the mosquito and rainy summer seasons.

He had a job at GMB Cleveland in Msasa where he was on contract in 1993 before he moved to the then Sheraton Hotel in 1994.
His story suddenly changes as he makes allegations against a senior manager at the upmarket hotel.

“My manager stole our money and fled the country and the new manager reduced my working days and I would go for work three days a week and this had a drastic effect on my income and I had no choice but to move on,” he said.
Mazanza claims he started a flower business at the Africa Unity Square.

“In 1996 I started selling flowers and I was unfortunate to lose everything.”
Mazanza said the debacle left him without anything to look after his family and his wife fled the matrimonial home in Zengeza, Chitungwiza, after failing to pay his rentals.

However, his nephew (who believes he should not be named for his safety) has a different story altogether.
He said Mazanza has a problem that needs divine intervention.

He does not believe that his uncle, despite his upbringing has become a vagrant.
“I have from time-to-time offered my uncle transport money for us to go home in Chitungwiza but he is a cunning fellow who always admits to going home with me but disappears when the time to go home comes,” he said.

The nephew said Mazanza had spurned many offers to have decent shelter from all sides of his family.
“The family owns two houses in Chitungwiza and he can use the Zengeza house which is currently occupied by tenants but he is not interested in staying there but the streets. My father, his brother is a worried man.

“His mother is still alive in Domboshava where the family owns cattle but he has chosen to be a vagrant,” he said.
His colleagues on the streets have one word for Mazanza’s behaviour “Zed”, an illicit, potent spirit, full name “Zimbabwe Energy Drink”.
“Murehwa is addicted to Zed and that is his problem.

“He does not drink anything besides Zed and no-one can assist him as he is beyond redemption,” one of his colleagues said.
The plight of vagrants and street people has always been attributed to poverty and unfortunate circumstances but the question remains; what happens to people like Murehwa?
Should we keep supporting them?

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