Some Conversations We Have With Heavy Hearts

Not every couch conversation is a light one. Some weeks the chair we pull up is beside grief, and we sit not to debate but to honour. This is one of those. Three lives were lost in Budiriro 3 over the weekend, in a flooded sewer excavation left open in a residential area — and in the middle of that darkness, one Zimbabwean did something so brave that the whole world’s professional divers should pause and take off their hats.

I want to hold two things at once in this piece, the way our culture has always known how to do. Grief for the three souls who did not come home alive. And profound honour for the man who made sure they came home at all. Both are true. Both deserve our full attention. Sit with me.

A Pit That Should Never Have Been Open

Let us tell it plainly and with respect. In Budiriro 3, in Harare, a deep excavation linked to ongoing sewer-rehabilitation works had been left as an open, water-and-mud-filled pit — by accounts roughly three metres deep, seven long, two wide — in a place where people walk home. Police report that a 19-year-old, Saul Karakadzai, was walking a narrow path with a friend when he fell into the sludge and drowned. His friend raised the alarm; residents and emergency services rushed to help.

When the rescue team descended, the tragedy deepened in a way no one expected. The first body recovered was not the young man at all, but a young woman who had reportedly gone missing the previous evening on her way to local shops. Then the body of an older man. And finally, on a further descent, the young man they had first come for. Three lives, in one terrible pit. The bodies were taken to Sally Mugabe Hospital, and the Mayor of Harare, Councillor Jacob Mafume, ordered an immediate investigation. We will return to that duty. But first, the man who went down to find them.

One Man, Again and Again, Into the Black Water

His name is Victor Kazembe. Many know him as Coach Rambo — a sub-aqua diver, swimming instructor and life-saver who has given sixteen years, since 2008, to recovery missions most of us could never imagine. Working alongside the City of Harare Fire Brigade, he went down into that pit believing he was searching for one fallen young man.

Understand what that means. He lowered himself into a narrow, collapsing shaft of liquid mud and raw sewage, in total darkness, with no idea what his hands would meet. And when he found not one but three, he did not stop. He went back down — into the same suffocating black — until every one of them had been lifted out and returned to a grieving family. He has called it the most mysterious and disturbing operation of his entire career. He called it a sacrifice. It was.

The Science of Why This Dive Could Kill You — Tap Each

I want this section to reach every professional diver in the world, every certified rescue and recovery specialist who knows what they are looking at. Because what Coach Rambo did is not “swimming.” A flooded mud-and-sewage pit is widely regarded among rescue professionals as one of the most lethal environments a human being can enter — far more dangerous than open water, and deadly even with air on your back. Here is the science of why. Tap each.

He Deserves the Highest Honours

TeteGetty says this without hesitation: Victor Kazembe deserves national recognition of the highest order. Not a passing mention in the news cycle, but a formal honour — the kind a nation reserves for those who risk everything for others. We honour soldiers for valour. This was valour, in a uniform of mud.

To the Families, and the Affected

In his own reflections after the operation, Coach Rambo spoke not of his own bravery but of the pain of loss and the weight of what he had seen. He framed his descent as a sacrifice made so that families could have their loved ones back — so that grief could at least have a body to bury, a grave to visit, a goodbye to say. There is a deep mercy in that. In our culture, to bring a person home for a dignified burial is itself a sacred act; he gave three families that mercy.

To everyone touched by this tragedy — the parents of Saul, the family of the young woman who never came back from the shops, the loved ones of the older man — Coach Rambo’s act carries a message all on its own: you were not abandoned to the dark. Someone was willing to go down after your people and carry them back up into the light. That is what he gave you, at real cost to himself. May it be, in time, a small comfort inside an enormous grief.

To Everyone Who Helped

A recovery like this is never one person alone, and Coach Rambo would be the first to say so. Around him stood a circle of people who each chose dignity in a terrible hour, and they deserve our thanks too.

This is Ubuntu in its truest form — “I am because we are.” When the worst happens, a community does not scatter. It gathers, it helps, it carries one another, and it sends its bravest down into the dark. That instinct is one of the most beautiful things about who we are.

Honour Them by Making Sure It Never Happens Again

We cannot close without naming the hardest truth gently. This was not a natural disaster. By every account from residents, the pit was an open, unfenced, unlit excavation left in the middle of a place where families walk — and three people died because of it. The Mayor has ordered an investigation, and that is right. Residents have asked, simply, that trenches be properly covered, marked and finished on time. That is not too much to ask. It is the bare minimum a city owes the people who live in it.

So let our honouring of Coach Rambo carry a second commitment inside it. The truest tribute to the three who died, and to the man who brought them home, is to ensure no diver ever has to make that descent again — because no pit is ever again left open to swallow someone walking home from the shops. Honour the brave by removing the danger. Let accountability be part of how we grieve.

The Weekend, With Respect

Zimbabwe Excellence, He Is

We speak often, in these journals, of Zimbabwe excellence — in our minerals, our scholars, our athletes, our heritage. But sometimes excellence wears no medal and earns no salary worthy of the name. Sometimes it looks like a man lowering himself into a pit of black sewage in the dead of night, alone with the dead, because a family somewhere needs to bury their child. That is excellence of the rarest and highest kind: the excellence of courage spent for strangers.

Victor Kazembe will not call himself a hero — the truly brave rarely do. He called it a sacrifice and spoke of the pain of the families. But we may call him what he is. He is one of the bravest among us. He is a credit to his profession that the finest divers in the world should salute. He is proof that the greatness of a nation is measured not only in what it builds, but in who its people are willing to become for one another in the worst hour. Coach Rambo — Zimbabwe sees you. Zimbabwe thanks you. Zimbabwe excellence, you are.

And to Saul, to the daughter who did not come home, to the older man whose name we will learn — rest now. You were not forgotten in the dark. You were carried home by brave and gentle hands, into the light, to your people. Tovera Mudzimu Dzoka. May the earth hold you softly, and may your families know peace.