THE tragic death of Patience Madula is a harrowing reminder of the structural rot within our societal foundations.
Last week, news outlets across the country detailed the gruesome end of a life cut short in the Chiundura area, just outside Gweru.
As confirmed by Midlands police spokesperson Inspector Emmanuel Mahoko, Madula was brutally murdered by her husband, Brighton Kahlanga.
While we pray for her soul to find the peace that she was denied on earth, we must confront a chilling reality: her story is merely a visible symptom of a much deeper, more malignant cultural pathology.
The immediate reaction to such domestic horror is often a flurry of questions that reveal our collective complicity. "What did she do to provoke him?" or "Why was he so angry?" are the refrains that echo through our communities. To even ask these questions is to entertain the absurd notion that there is a justification for slaughter.
In a sane society, the "why" should be irrelevant when the result is a corpse.
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If a union has reached breaking point, the only rational solution is to part ways in peace.
Instead, we witness a cycle where one party ends up in a grave and the other in a prison cell — leaving behind a legacy of trauma and, in the context of our African traditional beliefs, the shadow of avenging spirits said to haunt a lineage until justice is paid in full.
The tragedy of Madula was not a solitary act; it was a communal failure. Reports suggest that the conflict was fuelled by accusations of infidelity made by the mother-in-law.
This highlights a toxic dynamic prevalent in many African marriages, where in-laws often act as catalysts for violence rather than voices of reason.
On one side, we have the groom’s family legitimising abuse under the guise of "discipline," and on the other, the bride’s family often urges her to "endure" the unendurable because of the myth that all men are inherently violent.
Madula was found in a pool of blood with multiple stab wounds, a testament to the torture she endured before her final breath. Yet, if you ask the person on the street, you will find a disturbing number of people who believe that, somehow, she must have earned her fate.
Gender-based violence remains a profound crisis across the continent, largely because it has been normalised through a perversion of culture and religion.
We have dressed up control as "tradition" and equated silence with "virtue." Until we stop asking what the victim did and start asking why our society produces men who believe they own the lives of their partners, the blood of women like Madula will continue to cry out from the soil. It is time we realise that no "reason" is worth a life, and no "tradition" is worth the soul of a nation.
- Joyline Chiedza Basira is an entrepreneur and activist using her media lens to write the column she needed to read years ago.