How Corruption In Zimbabwe is killing people

The Chilonga Bridge lies in ruin today—a ghost of what once was a vital artery linking lives across the Runde River. Villagers from Sengwe to Chikombedzi now stare across the water, cut off from markets, hospitals, and schools, stranded by a state that promised salvation but delivered silence.

In May 2022, tragedy struck. Samson Zvarimwa, a NetOne technician, and Loice Maradze, a money changer from Masvingo, drowned when their car was swept off the bridge. The nation mourned. The regime postured. “We’ve set money to build a new bridge,” they claimed.

But it was a lie.

No construction crews came. No pillars rose. The Chilonga Bridge was left to decay, just like the Chipinda Pools Bridge before it, lost to floods in 2000 and never rebuilt.

The looting of public funds is not a partisan curse—it’s a national plague. It devours roads, bridges

The Chipanga bridge ; credit Hopewell Chin’ono

, hospitals, and hope. Today, it punishes ZANU-PF loyalists and opposition voters alike, reminding every Zimbabwean that corruption kills, and abandonment has no political affiliation.

This is what it looks like when a nation is robbed blind: a broken bridge, a broken promise, and broken lives.