USD400 for vehicular homicide, 2 years in prison for ‘almost’ running over a cop…

“Kombi driver jailed two years, licence cancelled,” read the headline of story carried by Newsday [Friday, June 3, 2011, p4]. The Kwekwe-based kombi driver was also banned from driving commuter omnibuses and other heavy vehicles for the rest of his life. The story is that the 64 year-old man was cornered by a traffic cop while he was doing what these kombi drivers know best: loading passengers at an undesignated point.

The driver is reported to have sped toward the cop who was riding his patrol bike, intending to knock him down, as the State no doubt proved n court. But the cop was quick enough to jump off the bike only to watch helplessly while the mangled bike was dragged under the kombi.

Now, a young lady was killed a couple of months ago by a drunk driver who got off with a USD400 fine. Being the lay person that I am, I’m still trying to figure out the glaring differences of these sentences: one involves a cop and a kombi driver – those “eternal enemies” – the other a drunk driver who takes the life of a young woman obviously minding her own business.

Let’s exercise our imaginations a little: the drunk driver gets a “slap on the wrists,” but for all we know that’s not the end of his bingeing, drunk driving, threatening the lives of other road users and other traffic offences.

The cop returns to work, gets a new bike, imagine the probability of having another kombi driver trying to run him over.

Imagine the sentences thereof.

I already know about malice aforethought, which could explain the sentence meted out to the kombi driver, but I’m still banging my head trying to figure out why where a life is lost, the drunk driver gets that slap on the wrists, while a kombi driver who “threatened” the life of a cop gets two years behind bars?

But then in Zimbabwe these are the kind of questions that are asked just for the sake of it as responsible authorities have never been known for taking up any queries from members of the public. In fact, you are asked: are you telling us how to do our job? And you may as well end up behind bars yourself!

This entry was posted on June 6th, 2011 at 10:13 am by Marko Phiri and is filed under Reflections, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.