MASVINGO — A teacher at Muraba Primary School under Chief Muteki, Mwenezi district, smashed his nine-year-old son against a rock, killing him instantly before burying him in a shallow grave near the school.
Norbert Bvukumbwe (39) has been convicted of murder with actual intent but has not been sentenced because his lawyer, Collins Maboke, asked the High Court sitting in Masvingo yesterday to have the teacher taken for psychiatric examination.
The incident occurred on June 28 2009. Justice Francis Bere, who presided over the matter, reserved sentence.
“There is need to probe the mental stability of my client from his family, friends and workmates because the way he killed and buried the deceased leads to questions surrounding his mental condition,” Maboke said.
According to the State, on June 28 2009 at around 1600hrs, Bvukumbwe took his son, Tanaka, to the nearby Makungwe River for a bath.
While at the river, Bvukumbwe started assaulting his son with open hands all over the body and smashed him against a rock for failing to comply with his orders.
After the assault, the court heard, the teacher took his son, who had fallen unconscious, back to the school.
The son later died at around midnight the same day.
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Bvukumbwe did not reveal the death to anyone, but instead carried the body in a sleeping bag and buried it in a shallow grave at an anthill near the school.
A post-mortem report revealed that Tanaka died of skull fracture and head injuries from the assault.
Bvukumbwe was arrested after a fellow teacher, Rivhanos Ganda, who had witnessed the incident as he was also bathing in the same river some 130 metres away, spilled the beans.
In his defence, Bvukumbwe said Ganda had a personal vendetta against him. He claimed the now deceased fell from a rock and he had tried to assist him.
When quizzed on why he buried his son’s body secretly, Bvukumbwe said the teacher in charge at the satellite school, Stanford Chikamhi, removed the door of his house and gave it to a new teacher, so he feared that dogs and vultures might come and devour the corpse.
