The Sunday Mail
Chief Reporter
Twenty-year-old Mr Rangarirai Chekai of Barihwa Village, Gokwe wavers between joy and despair. Recently, the man was presumed dead and his family buried a corpse they mistook for his. Then mourners were shocked to see him a day after “his burial”. “I can laugh and smile now, but that experience confounded me. I only hope the body will be exhumed and buried in the right place,” Mr Chekai told The Sunday Mail.
His father, Mr Kumbirai Mapuranga Chekai, said, “Ranga secured work as a gold panner in Kwekwe and left home sometime in February 2016.
“At the time, he did not have any identification particulars. A cellphone was all he had. We got worried after going for three months without hearing from him. We then suspected that he had died.”
Then Radio Zimbabwe’s “Zvisivisio Zverufu/Izaziso Zemfa” programme announced that the body of a man of the same age and built as Ranga had been found on the Kwekwe-Mvuma Highway.
It was a suspected hit-and-run car incident, the announcer said, and that corpse had not been identified for four weeks. Mr Chekai Snr and his wife thought it was their son’s body that had been abandoned on the highway.
“We caught the next bus to Kwekwe where we told police that we suspected the dead body we had heard about on radio was our son’s. “We then travelled to Harare as the corpse had been transferred there,” said Mr Chekai Snr.
“The body had been in the mortuary for long and was, therefore, decomposing, so it was difficult to make out the identity of the deceased.”
The couple believed it was their son’s body and transported it to Gokwe for burial. There was no body-viewing at the funeral wake as the body was decomposing.
Mr Chekai Jr’s friends were not convinced their colleague had died and kept making frantic efforts to locate him.
A contact in Kwekwe confirmed having seen him two days early, the same day the corpse was transported from Harare.
Mr Chekai Snr said: “About an hour after burial, we received a phone call from one of Ranga’s friends who told us that he was with our son.
“I hung up immediately, disturbed by what I thought to be a distasteful joke. But the friend called again and I spoke to Ranga whose voice I obviously recognised.
“I was still in denial, though, and cross-examined him just to be sure. I knew there and then that this was my son.
“Ranga came home the following day, while ‘mourners’ were still gathered and getting ready to distribute his belongings.
“There was disbelief everywhere, with some touching him and other pressing his cheeks.
“Others, still, did not dare get close to him. We are helping him with counselling as such an episode is indeed traumatic.”
National Police spokesperson Senior Assistant Commissioner Charity Charamba said, “We have confirmed the case and directed our officers to exhume the body immediately.
“Initial reports were that the deceased was hit by a car on April 18, 2016 in Kwekwe, and his body moved to Parirenyatwa before it had been identified by the Chekai family.
“It all turned out to be a case of mistaken identity after the family buried the wrong body. We are now making arrangements for the body to be buried elsewhere.
“It will possibly be a pauper’s burial unless the body is positively identified. This case shows why we always tell people to carry identification cards at all times.
“And certainly, we will also investigate circumstances leading to the death.”
