Boris Mushonga – who was lionised as a hero during his funeral in Harare’s teeming Mbare suburb this week – was a criminal with an attitude: a big and haughty one.
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Mushonga had become something of an outlaw folk hero as he eluded the police in a sort of “catch-me-if-you-can” crime spree. Said his sister: “My brother was a difficult character to understand, brave and sometimes dangerous. He always lived on the edge and was always running.”
Mushonga must have left a power vacuum in the criminal fraternity even though he died at the very young age of 23 because he had become the Godfather of the community. According to reports, Mushonga had become a legend in his own neighbourhood – both for his criminal exploits and his generosity from the proceeds of robbery, his specialisation. Indeed, criminals do specialise. It’s an advantage in that they become better and better in their area of specialisation.
But specialisation also has disadvantages in that offenders leave their handiwork for the police to track them; a pattern emerges. The more they beat the criminal justice system, the more they become emboldened to commit more offences, growing ever more swollen-headed, arbitrary and reckless. This eventually leads to their arrest.
Or death – as befell Mushonga and his five-member gang, which included molls a la mode Bonnie and Clyde, when they perished in a horrific head-on collision while reportedly fleeing from the police.
“He was a cat with more than nine lives,” said a “business partner” of Mushonga.
Now Mushonga’s nine lives are up. Living on the run and on the edge is no way to live. It was not going to end well for him. You will be hunted down like an animal. The correct approach for a start is not to turn Mushonga into some kind of pseudo-celebrity by the media covering his every exploit, real or imagined. Criminals are criminals. They have a predisposition to lawbreaking.
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That is how self-centred and selfish they are. They make it their full-time business to break the law and take glory in that. No one – absolutely no one – can budge them from that. That’s how warped their minds are.
While a lot of people have been speaking fondly of Mushonga, they should in the same breath admit that he endangered the lives of the police officers pursuing him and those of the public in trying to evade capture as he drove at a maniacal speed resulting in last week’s crash which, fortunately, did not claim any innocent victims as the gangsters’ light vehicle rammed into a passenger bus.
“He was a smart robber who never held any gun or killed anyone in his business,” another “business partner” said.
Well, no one in this world, particularly in this depressed economy, needs to have what they worked hard for stolen or robbed from them. And before everyone starts screaming “but the crooks in high government posts, but the crooks in the banks . . .”, remember this: This young man didn’t steal from the rich. He stole from average, working people. Mushonga did not portray sensitivity or consideration where it was needed – in the manner of a person who wants what he wants when he wants it and fast without thinking deeply or considering the effects his actions may cause.
Most people are born with a quantum of fairness, but not career criminals. They subvert the saying that “what’s mine is mine; and what’s yours is yours” to “what’s mine is mine; and what’s YOURS is MINE”.
And while there are crooks in high government posts, it has been refreshing and reassuring to hear Indigenisation minister Francis Nhema say: “If you are going into sections of the service industry like banks, manufacturing and others where there is no resource to begin with, then you cannot say the 51% is mine.” Indeed, no one – from Mushonga to government leaders – must reap where they haven’t sown. It is hoped Nhema’s predecessor Saviour Kasukuwere has come round to understand this basic fact because anything else would be like daylight robbery – which Mushonga was an expert at.
Mushonga began stealing as a child, and apparently went unpunished. If he could have been led in another direction with proper parenting – or any parenting at all – who knows, he could still be with us. It is a parent’s responsibility to teach their child right from wrong; not to teach them to steal by any means possible.
Just because you want something does not give you the right to steal it. It’s possible Mushonga grew up in a dysfunctional home with his maternal grandparents and single mother as widely reported. Indeed people should be given second chances in this world, especially if they have had a rough upbringing and have had no one to fall back on with their issues.
But this cannot provide all the answers to Mushonga’s highly-charged criminal behaviour. While, for instance, a mother’s drinking and subsequent meanness is not anything to wish on any child, many people grow up in those circumstances and don’t commit major crimes like that. Just as government can’t do everything, parents can’t do everything. There is what is called individual choice and initiative.
And just because Mushonga was a dashing and dazzling young man who some people — many people — found attractive doesn’t change the fact that he was a criminal, an outlaw.
The tragedy must not be taken out of context and blown out of proportion. There is no need to glamourise or put a gloss on criminals.
So, sad as the circumstances of Mushonga’s death, it’s weird to glorify him as a folk hero — ask his victims, my daughter being one of them.
