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Gibson Nyikadzino Herald Correspondent

IT is the hope of this writer that one day, because time is the master, Zimbabweans will change their attitude when they interpret death.

At the moment, it appears there is no longer a natural crime. Crimes are now political and deaths have become political. In politics, the use of death as a political symbol for mobilising a collectivity remains unexplained.

To contemporary politicians neither driven by social values nor mores, the instance of death has become an “opportunity” craved for a long time to control people.

But politicians return to their bases soon after burials have been conducted and funeral rites have been done. The biggest damage they might cause is depriving grieving families of closure and finality. Death can also be nice, so is life.

Historically, it was the church that cultivated fear of death to advance its own control over individual life to serve and accommodate the political realities of that era. And politicians, of late, have done the same.

Death has always been a human problem, but in modern times, it seems to become a new kind of problem.

But in the face of death, if we fail to be religious or politically aligned, let us not fail to be human. It is normal to interpret death as politics happening in a different context.

However, a family that has lost a member in an act of gruesome violence deserves some modicum of privacy and support than political rhetoric.

The ‘radical’ anarchist, nihilist

The death of Moreblessing Ali provides empirical conclusions that the biologically living body may be symbolically dead, and the physically dead person may be more powerful than the living.

Traces of the symbolically-dead, but biologically and physically living men are visible in the manner one Job Sikhala has tried to incite unrest, agitate the Ali family in their time of grief and also disrespect traditional protocol with vulgarity in the name of lawyering.

That is Sikhala! All bark and no bite, all sizzle and no steak, and all show and no go. A man trying hard to become a radical anarchist and quickly turning into a nihilist.

He has become so accustomed to insensitivity even in death that he cannot act with rationality.

He is that man who in 2018 ahead of the harmonised general elections went on a radio rally and stammered and stuttered after a caller highlighted what a philanderer he was.

Hypothetically, Sikhala is insensitive to the living as he wrecks the holiness of their matrimonies and is numb to their grief. Such is him, a double-edged sword of pretence.

“All we ask for is just to bury our child with no drama, we just want to do this in peace. We do not want to provide a fighting ground for people. We are hurt and need prayers,” said Moreblessing’s brother, Wellington.

Ali’s life epilogue is a key variable on how the opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) has for long tried to politicise deaths, instead of sharing sympathies as expected culturally and traditionally.

Scouting for political profit

Few deaths which the CCC politicise tell an enormous amount on both the organisation of death and the nature of political debate the opposition wants to feed the people. For the CCC, deaths should be politicised to give them subjective ‘meaning’ given that to them politics is becoming all-consuming and the pinnacle of life for many.

It is often said that dead bodies have properties that make them particularly effective political symbols. The dead are seen as excellent means for accumulating something essential to political transformation, which is symbolic capital. A corpse can be a site of political profit.

In claiming Moreblessing’s corpse, the CCC is keen on establishing political legitimacy, which they have not secured in legitimate political terms but want to attain using a social misfortune. But the human body is as much a social object as it is a biological entity, and death is as much a social event as it is a physical happening.

The law and biblical vengeance!

The Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) is one of the leading law enforcement institutions in the region and in the case of Moreblessing, they have a suspect. The service has received credit in more heinous cases and their commitment to bringing this matter to justice is crystal. They follow the lead.

Also, society has a way of dealing with misfortunes like these. They speak of avenging spirits. While some may be attempted and tempted to think of vengeance, a small biblical reading does provide an answer.

For the pious, Bible stories help serve justice. In Genesis 9:6 God says, “if anyone takes a human life, that person’s life will also be taken by human hands. For God made human beings in his own image.”

Corpse politics, dangerous politics

The issue of dead body politics and death politics now occupies distinct experiences for the average person. This now follows what anthropologist Katherine Verdery termed “the political lives of dead bodies” in which people want to mobilise the dead so they do their political bidding.

In cultural consciousness, the politicisation of death is normally associated with violence on the body. Politicised deaths however, occupy a minor sub-group in the population of the dead, there can be little doubt that they have the largest impact of all on the speaking.

While meanings are attached to death and all other social events, generating political profit from these unfortunate events strikes sadness on the cultural values and norms shared by Zimbabweans. How death and dead bodies are dealt with is far from a homogeneous field.

Itself a tragedy, death confronts people with other tragedies from the past, to which politics should not be part of it for that does not provide occasions for dealing with the aftermath of losses with sanity.

As said by Max Weber, the pursuit of meaning is at the heart of human activity, and that social analysis aims to understand meanings rather than to explain causes. We need not understand this death as a political stage to amass political symbolism.