HARARE — Before the family of Kelvin Tinashe Choto knew he had been killed last week, social media in the country was circulating a photo of his battered body lying on the reception counter of a local police station where it had been left by angry protesters.
The 22-year-old was shot in the head, one of at least a dozen people killed in a violent crackdown by security forces on protests against a dramatic increase in fuel prices. Dozens of Zimbabweans were shot. Others say they have been hunted down in their homes at night, with soldiers and masked people in plainclothes dragging them away, severely beating them and leaving them for dead. Some are activists and labour leaders.
Others, like Choto, have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. A captain at a small soccer club in Chitungwiza, a dormitory town south-east of Harare, he had been planning to travel to neighbouring South Africa this week to look for better-paying teams.
“He was our future,” said his father, Julius Choto, as the family buried him on Saturday.
Teammates chanted the team’s war cry, handed the family his jersey and carried his coffin.
“He was disciplined, respectable and non-violent. All he cared for was his football. He was a very good footballer,” the father said.
He said his son had been watching the protests from a soccer field, “some meters away from the action,” on Tuesday when he was gunned down.
“Maybe they thought he was an (opposition) activist since he was wearing a red Manchester United jersey,” his father said.
The family only discovered his body the following morning at a local mortuary.
“I have been robbed,” Julius said, crying. “He was my only son and his future was bright. I have been robbed by the State.”
