#NyashaMushekwiOthersAbandonItai
Family, relatives and friends of late Zimbabwean journalist Itai Mushekwe who died in May in Cologne, Germany – including prominent football player Nyasha Mushekwi – are in the spotlight after details emerged about his mysterious death and how they abandoned him to his fate in a far-flung foreign land where he was given a pauper’s burial.
Itai and Nyasha are cousins and grew up together at Strathaven in Harare.
While Itai became a fairly good journalist, Nyasha went on to become a prominent footballer.
Nyasha played for CAPS United, Mamelodi Sundowns in South Africa, Belgian side Oostende, and several other clubs in Denmark, Sweden and China. After training at the Christian College of Southern Africa in Harare, coming from Ellis Robins Boys High School, Itai worked for the Zimbabwe Independent newspaper for some years.
He then left the country in 2007 and lived in Germany for some 18 years until his recent death. Itai worked for Germany media organisations before he founded his own platforms, online news platforms Telescope News and Spotlight Zimbabwe, which focused on taabloid-like reporting on politics and corruption, mismanagement, and human rights issues in Zimbabwe.
His work covered various topics, including economics, elections, foreign policy, and cyber warfare.
During his stay in Germany, he lost contact with family (except a few people), relatives and friends.
Only a few relatives visited him in those 18 years in Germany.
In the end, he died a cold, lonely death – alone without anyone close to him – and his family did not show up, leading to his burial by strangers thousands of kilometres away from home.
Itai, 42, died on May 30 and August 20 – almost three months later – and was buried at Südfriedhof in Cologne at 1pm by two local compassionate Germans, a pastor and a funeral parlour representative.
Those who knew the Rusape-born journalist well in Germany are still wondering how a whole family – with some people of means like Nyasha – would abandon a blood relative and allow him to be buried without anyone close to him about 12 000km away from home.
