The deaths of Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission commissioner Dr Martin Muduva and nurse Lyliosa Chirara have left three children without both parents, two families mourning separately and police examining a violent dispute that had been building for years. A new paternity demand has now added another painful question.
The final days of Martin Muduva and Lyliosa Chirara began in a home in Dzivarasekwa Extension and ended in two separate burial ceremonies, a handwritten note and a family divided by grief.
Muduva, a 42-year-old commissioner with the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission and a lecturer at Midlands State University, died at Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals after being struck on the head with an axe. Chirara, 43, a nurse, died after consuming rat poison hours after the attack. Police opened investigations into what they described as a murder and a sudden death by suicide.
The couple’s relationship stretched back to their school days at Murambinda High School. They had known each other as students before marriage and raised three children together. Their first born child is now in Form One and they had taken her to a boarding school about two days prior to their brutal deaths. Accounts from relatives and mourners have described a partnership that covered more than a decade of married life and, including the years before marriage, about a quarter of a century of shared history.
That long beginning has become central to the grief surrounding the deaths. The tragedy was not simply the collapse of a marriage in its final years. It was the destruction of a family that had been built while both partners were still young, before Muduva’s academic and professional rise changed the circumstances around them.
Muduva trained as an electrical and electronics engineer and built a career that included data science, cybersecurity, information security, digital transformation and corporate risk management. He was appointed to the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission in December 2024 and also served on an Innovation Drive and Assessment Committee linked to the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ).
At the time of his death, he was regarded as a prominent public official and academic. He was also a lecturer at the Midlands State University (MSU), where his second wife, Patience Mangwiro, whom he had married, also works as an Execurive Director for the MSU Enterprise LTD – a business unit of the university. Muduva’s professional standing, however, became part of the private conflict described in Chirara’s handwritten note. In the note, she wrote that her husband changed after obtaining his PhD and becoming more successful. She said he had grown distant, had stopped having lula lula with her and was no longer sleeping in their bedroom. She said he was no longer treating her as the woman with whom he had built his life.
Chirara also wrote that Muduva objected to her keeping 500 chickens at their home for an egg-production business. She said she had been forced to sell the chickens and that he told her his earnings were his own business and that she had no right to know how much he made.
The note further stated: “I’m crying, I’m suffering, murume avekundisema, kundisvipira mate nhasi nekuti ave nemari, akanganwa kwatakabva,” accusing Muduva of despising her because he had money and had forgotten the difficult years they had shared.
The most serious point of conflict was Muduva’s relationship with Patience Mangwiro, a senior executive at the Midlands State University. The relationship was reported to have lasted about five years. Shortly before Muduva’s death, he paid lobola for Mangwiro, formally marking the union in a ceremony that became a source of anger and humiliation for Chirara.
Chirara wrote that she learnt about the ceremony through a social media post showing the roora proceedings. She said the second marriage had been kept from her and described it as a betrayal. She also accused members of Muduva’s family of supporting his decision to marry another woman.
A section of the note addressed to Muduva’s brother, Misheck Muduva, was written in red ink while the rest was written in blue. Chirara said she had become, in the eyes of her husband and his relatives, “FOOL, THE DOG, THE WASTE”.
Addressing Misheck, she wrote: “Babamukuru Baba vaPhilip, be happy, all that you wanted has come to pass, you were the one encouraging Martin to get an educated wife because the wife that he had was no longer fit for him, he needed a wife who understood the way he worked and who respected him.”
She continued: “You went to marry, you did well. You went as the father and that’s exactly what you should have done. I was always trying to tell you how I was suffering but I could see that you didn’t have any concern about what I was telling you until you told me that you didn’t want to intervene in our problems. But, you intervened when Patience Mangwiro was being married because you wanted her. Chisarai mugarike, please take care of my children.”
Misheck had accompanied Muduva when he paid lobola for Mangwiro. He acknowledged the contents of the note during funeral proceedings and said the couple had been struggling for some time.
“Lyliosa and Muduva had a misunderstanding for some time, and some issues are too sensitive to be disclosed publicly,” he said.
“Among them was Muduva’s decision to marry another wife. Lyliosa accepted after several counselling sessions, where I represented the Muduva family and she was with her two sisters.”
He said Chirara had set a condition that she was not at liberty to cancel the marriage certificate. He also said Muduva told the family that he had given Chirara US$2,000 as a token for violating their marriage vows, although she neither confirmed nor denied receiving the money.
The family dispute was also marked by accusations of threats. A close relative said Muduva had five children with three women and that he and Chirara had considered divorce before the relationship deteriorated further.
“When Lyliosa got married to Muduva they were blessed with three children. The first-born represented other kids and I am not sure if her mother attended the burial. Their marriage started to shake with the coming in of Patience. There were threats,” the relative said.
The note was discovered only when Chirara’s belongings were being packed before her burial in Njanja, Hwedza. Her clothes and other personal items were being prepared for burial in line with traditional custom when women found documents hidden among them.
Nancy Tembo, a close friend of Chirara, said the family informed the Muduva family about the note, but relatives on Muduva’s side did not want it read. The Chirara family read it, leading to another confrontation between the two families.
“We discovered the suicide note while packing her belongings in preparation to go to Njanja for burial.
“After informing the Muduva family about the note, they did not want it read, but the Chirara family read it.
“That caused more discord and we left the house in a huff as some Muduva family members had been angered by some members of Chirara’s family,” Tembo said.
Tembo said no member of the Muduva family witnessed Chirara’s burial. Muduva was buried separately at his parents’ homestead in Buhera, while Chirara’s relatives remained with mourners in Dzivarasekwa before taking her body to her family home.
The arrangements for Muduva’s funeral also exposed practical difficulties after his death. He had not built a house of his own in the rural area, so mourners gathered at the family homestead. A community member said the burial was delayed because there was no funeral policy and a coffin had not yet been bought.
“Muduva was an urban person and he did not build his own house here in the village,” the community member said.
“We were told burial was supposed to happen on Saturday but it was delayed because we heard that he had no funeral policy while his wife had a funeral policy. Takaswera takatarisira body on Friday only to be told that his coffin was yet to be bought.”
At the centre of the note was the couple’s three children. Chirara wrote that she wanted to see them grow and apologised for leaving them without either parent.
“My kids, they don’t know anything, yes, I wanted to see them grow but I would still have died because of stress, sorry, I have failed. To my mothers, I know I have inflicted pain on you where it hurts the most but understand this letter, I have written it with tears streaming down my cheeks,” she wrote.
Her final appeal was: “Chisarai mugarike, please take care of my children.”
The investigation was still under way when the note became public. National police spokesperson Commissioner Paul Nyathi said officers had not yet seen it.
“The Zimbabwe Republic Police is yet to see the suicide note reported to have been left by the deceased. Police are investigating the murder and sudden death by suicide cases in Dzivarasekwa Extension,” Comm Nyathi said.
Zavirima said the image created the impression that the girl was Muduva’s daughter. He said the child’s identity should not be determined by a social media photograph and demanded a DNA test.
“I am very sure that I am the father of Patience Mangwiro’s daughter, the one she posted on social media in the arms of Commissioner Muduva,” Zavirima said.
“The post suggests that my daughter is Muduva’s child. If the daughter is not mine, then DNA tests will prove that.”
Zavirima said he married Mangwiro in 2018 and held a white wedding with her in Masvingo the following year. He said their relationship broke down towards the end of 2022 amid complicated problems linked to infidelity. He said the marriage certificate had since been cancelled and that he had remarried.
“We have since cancelled the marriage certificate and I am now happily married to another woman,” he said.
Mangwiro did not respond to questions about the paternity claim, citing workplace protocol. When asked about the wider tragedy, she said: “Murikudei, ndati murikudei, will my comment bring back Martin? Come on, not everything is content,” she fumed.
The deaths have come during a period of renewed concern about violent attacks in Zimbabwean homes and families. On 13 September, only days after the Dzivarasekwa deaths, 26-year-old Abigail Mwale and her two sons, five-year-old Johanne Maiswa and seven-month-old Jayden Mwale, were found dead at Shirleigh Farm in the Darwendale area of Mashonaland West. Police said the bodies had been dragged into a hut, locked inside and burnt. The suspect remained at large, while blood-stained clothing, a sack, an adze and socks were recovered from the scene.
The cases are separate, but the timing has left communities confronting another sequence of family and household violence in which children have been among the victims. Research reviewing a decade of Zimbabwean studies has recorded intimate-partner violence as a persistent public health problem. The review cited figures from the 2015 Demographic and Health Survey indicating that about 45 per cent of women in Zimbabwe had experienced intimate-partner violence, a rate above the global and sub-Saharan African averages cited in the study.
In Dzivarasekwa, the private grievances described in Chirara’s note have now become part of the public record. They include the effect of a second marriage, the pain of a relationship that began at school, arguments over money and business, years of separation inside the home, and the anger surrounding a social media post.
The burials are over, but the consequences remain with the children, relatives and families who must now decide how to care for them. Police continue to investigate the deaths, while Zavirima’s demand for a DNA test has widened the dispute beyond the marriage that ended in violence.
The final line of Chirara’s note was a request that someone protect her children. It is now the responsibility left to the families after a relationship that began with two school pupils ended with two graves and a family searching for answers.