A Cardboard Box for a Cast: The Tragedy of Zimbabweans

It was a hot afternoon when *Tariro* life was changed forever. She had been involved in a car accident on the outskirts of Harare, her body badly injured, her arm crushed in the wreckage. She had been rushed to one of the major hospitals in the capital, desperate for medical attention, but what awaited her was nothing short of shocking.

The emergency room was overflowing with patients, and the hospital staff, already overwhelmed, scrambled to help her. But when the doctor examined her arm Tariro’s heart sank. She needed immediate care, including a proper cast to stabilize the broken bones. Yet, there were no supplies. No plaster. No proper materials. The hospital had nothing to treat her with, and this was a major facility in the capital city.

Instead of a cast, the doctor handed her a makeshift solution: a cardboard box and a roll of tape. Tariro’s leg was wrapped in cardboard, a crude and inadequate substitute for the proper medical treatment she desperately needed. It was a grim reality, a stark reminder of how far Zimbabwe’s healthcare system had fallen.

Tariro was not alone in her suffering. She had become another tragic statistic in a country where the healthcare system had crumbled under the weight of corruption, mismanagement, and government incompetence. Across the country, hospitals that once offered hope to the people now stood as symbols of failure, struggling to function with dwindling resources.

The Zimbabwean government, paralyzed by a leadership crisis, had long since abandoned its responsibility to its citizens. President Mnangagwa, clinging to power and obsessed with securing a third term, had allowed the country’s institutions to decay, including the very hospitals that should have been saving lives. While millions of dollars were siphoned off by criminal cartels controlled by those in power, the health of the nation had been forgotten.

It wasn’t that Zimbabwe’s hospitals didn’t need funds—they did. In fact, all six of the country’s central hospitals could operate smoothly with just US$60 million a year. This small sum would prevent shortages, provide vital medicines like painkillers, and ensure that patients like Tariro could receive proper care. But instead of these funds being used to save lives, they were being looted and misappropriated by the very people meant to safeguard them. As a result, the hospitals were left struggling to even get basic supplies, while essential medicines remained out of reach for those who needed them most.

Every day, thousands of Zimbabweans were dying unnecessarily from diseases that were easily treatable—malaria, tuberculosis, even common infections that could be cured with antibiotics. The tragic irony was that many of these deaths were preventable, had the government not been so embroiled in its own corruption and incompetence.

Tariro’s story was just one of many. Every day, ordinary Zimbabweans were faced with the impossible: They had to choose between suffering in silence or facing the stark reality that their own government had failed them. The hospitals that were supposed to heal them were now simply places where hope went to die. A cardboard box and tape were all they had to offer. It was a symbol of a government that had lost all sense of duty to its people.

The nation wept for the future, as the country’s healthcare system continued to crumble under the weight of greed and incompetence. Zimbabwe’s hospitals were in ruins, and there seemed to be no end in sight. While the president sought a third term, the people of Zimbabwe paid the price with their lives.