EDITORIAL COMMENT: An injury to one is an injury to all

01 Jul, 2022 - 00:07 0 Views
EDITORIAL COMMENT: An injury to one is an injury to all The late Livingstone Sunhwa

The ManicaPost

A DARK cloud hangs over St Mathias Tsonzo High School, an Anglican Church-run institution in Mutasa District.

This follows the disappearance of Livingstone Sunhwa, a student at the school, last year on December 6.

Livingstone had just been released from police custody into the custody of his headmaster after being arrested on allegations of stealing snacks from the school’s tuck-shop.

He was due to sit for an examination on December 7 but this was never to be.

For seven good months, Livingstone’s mother has been crying, demanding justice for her son.

 

The police, on the other hand, could not find any leads on Livingstone’s whereabouts.

That was until last week on Friday when remains suspected to be Livingstone’s where discovered deep in a jungle about a kilometre from the school.

A deoxyribonucleic acid is now required to establish whether those are Livingstone’s remains.

But amidst all of this, the people of Zimbabwe are furious, and rightly so.

What is really mindboggling is how a student could have sneaked from the school in the first place, with the boarding masters and security guards not detecting anything.

Parents are demanding to know if this particular boarding school is safe for their children.

But before we even talk about the possibility of death, the fact that someone’s child disappeared from a boarding school is enough to sound all alarm bells.

Does it mean students and the outside community walk in and out of St Mathias Tsonzo High School’s boarding facilities as they please?

These are grave concerns because when children are entrusted by their parents to a school, the parents delegate to the school certain responsibilities for their children, and the school assume certain liabilities.

The child’s physical safety is entrusted to the school and to the teachers, who thus become legally liable for the child’s safety.

In fact, the school and the teachers take some of the parents’ duties and authority.

This means the school authorities are entirely responsible for the students’ whereabouts and anything divergent from this is entirely unacceptable.

But the court of public opinion is not only angry at the school authorities, but the schools’ responsible authority as well, the Anglican Church.

The church demanded justice, the truth and thorough investigations through a statement released on Saturday morning following the discovery of the human remains at the school.

However, onlookers believe that the church could have done better than this.

 

Those following the story with keen interest are of the opinion that releasing a statement seven months after the disappearance of a student was a shoddy public relations job.

The move spoke of a religious institution that was now only waking up from its deep slumber due to the growing voices of an angry mob, a church that only said something in order to look good.

That said, justice has to be served as soon as yesterday.
It is hoped that the DNA test will soon provide the much needed closure to Livingstone’s family. If there was any foul play, heads should roll and those responsible must have their day in court and in prison.
In the event that police investigations conclude that Livingstone committed suicide, the boarding master and/or security guards will still have a case to answer because the young man was not supposed to sneak out of the dormitory under their watch.

Those children in our schools are the future of this nation and their safety is of paramount importance, not just to their parents but to the nation as a whole.

They are everyone’s children.

 

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