At least 27 people were killed on Friday evening when a minibus carrying members of a popular African Christian denomination collided head-on with a haulage truck on a highway near the central Zimbabwean town of Chivhu, prompting President Emmerson Mnangagwa to declare a State of Disaster.
The crash occurred at approximately 18:30 GMT on the Harare-Masvingo highway, roughly 140 kilometers south of the capital, according to police spokesperson Paul Nyathi. The truck was attempting to overtake another vehicle when it struck the minibus, which was carrying members of the Mwazha Church who were traveling to a conference. The force of the impact was so severe that the minibus was virtually unrecognizable.
State-run broadcaster ZBC News, quoting a provincial government minister, reported that 23 people died at the scene while others succumbed to their injuries after being admitted to a local hospital. Emergency responders found the minibus almost completely destroyed, with footage shared on social media showing the vehicle charred to a shell and the truck resting on the opposite side of the road in what witnesses described as a flat, remote stretch with low vegetation lining both sides of the highway.
State of Disaster Declared
President Mnangagwa officially declared a State of Disaster following the tragedy, the deadliest road accident in the country this year. The declaration signals the government’s recognition of the incident’s severity and opens the door for emergency resource allocation to support victims’ families and improve road safety measures along the corridor.
The crash has reignited a fierce national debate about road safety in Zimbabwe, where deteriorating infrastructure and reckless driving have made highways among the most dangerous in the world. The Harare-Masvingo highway, one of the country’s main arterial routes connecting the capital to the southern border with South Africa, has been the site of multiple fatal accidents in recent years, with critics pointing to years of government neglect and underfunding of road maintenance across the entire network.
The minibus, a type of commuter vehicle known locally as a kombi, is the backbone of public transportation across Zimbabwe. But these vehicles are routinely criticized for overloading passengers, poor mechanical condition, and drivers who flout traffic regulations with impunity. The private operators who run kombi services face minimal regulatory oversight despite carrying thousands of passengers daily on roads that stretch across the country’s vast rural areas.
A Pattern of Deadly Crashes
Friday’s disaster is part of a grim pattern of mass-casualty road accidents in Zimbabwe. In April, at least 18 people were killed when a minibus burst into flames on a highway in the south of the country. Earlier the same month, a woman and her five children died when their vehicle collided with a haulage truck on another highway linking Zimbabwe and South Africa. These incidents have piled pressure on authorities to address what many see as a systemic failure in road safety governance across the nation.
The Zimbabwe Republic Police recorded more than 1,600 road fatalities in 2025, a figure that transport safety advocates say significantly undercounts the true toll due to underreporting in rural areas where many crashes occur far from hospitals or official recording stations. The police have repeatedly called for drivers to exercise caution, but enforcement remains patchy across the country’s 96,000 kilometers of road network, with speed cameras virtually absent outside major urban centers.
The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa estimates that approximately 300,000 people die in road crashes across the continent each year, roughly a quarter of the global toll. The commission says Africa has the world’s highest road fatality rate, driven by a combination of poor road conditions, inadequate enforcement of traffic laws, and aging vehicle fleets that fail to meet basic safety standards.
In Zimbabwe, the problem is compounded by the state of the road network itself. Years of economic crisis have left many highways riddled with potholes and lacking proper signage, lighting, and median barriers. Drivers regularly complain that dangerous overtaking maneuvers are often forced by the poor condition of the roads, which leave insufficient space for safe passing on two-lane highways that handle heavy commercial traffic between Harare and the South African border.
Church Community in Mourning
Local leaders and church officials have called for prayers and support for the victims’ families, with funeral arrangements being coordinated across affected communities. Counseling services have been offered to those traumatized by the tragedy, which has sent shockwaves through the Mwazha Church, one of Africa’s indigenous Christian denominations with a significant following across southern Africa.
The Mwazha Church, founded in the early twentieth century, traces its origins to a prophetic movement in what was then Southern Rhodesia. Its members are predominantly rural and working-class Zimbabweans who travel regularly for gatherings and conferences, often relying on shared minibus transport due to limited public transit options in remote areas where private vehicles are a luxury few can afford.
The incident has drawn international attention to Zimbabwe’s broader road safety crisis, with transport experts calling for urgent reform of the country’s traffic management systems, stricter enforcement of vehicle safety standards, and a comprehensive overhaul of the highway infrastructure that has claimed so many lives in recent years. Advocacy groups say the government must move beyond expressions of sympathy and implement concrete measures to reduce the staggering death toll on Zimbabwe’s roads before more lives are lost on the same crumbling highways.
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