There are moments in politics when words reveal far more than they were meant to. Job “Wiwa” Sikhala, once tortured and humiliated at the hands of state agents, now finds some undivided attention from me for different reasons. A photograph of the retired Assistant Commissioner Crispen Makedenge, frail and visibly diminished, was enough to trigger Sikhala’s sermon in a post on X.
He declared that the man’s condition was “the wages of sin.” In that instant, I saw not the defender of democracy but a man laying down a theology of vengeance.
It is worth pausing on that phrase, “the wages of sin.” It sounds biblical, almost righteous, but behind it lies a crude worldview. It assumes that illness, weakness, and aging are punishments for moral failure. It strips away the complexity of life and replaces it with a blunt verdict: if you are suffering, you must deserve it.
For someone who supposedly aspires to lead the people, this is chilling. Zimbabwe is a country of hospitals that cannot heal, clinics without medicine, and a generation broken by poverty. If misfortune is proof of guilt, then what future awaits the sick and the poor under the gospel according to Sikhala?
What makes his words dangerous is that they mirror the same logic of those who once tortured him. Authoritarianism begins by marking people as guilty before any evidence is heard. The state’s victims were not human beings in need of dignity but criminals, traitors, and sinners in the eyes of power. Sikhala himself was dragged through that system. And yet, with a single triumphant post, he reaches for the same weapon. He takes another man’s decline, parades it before the public, and claims divine justice has spoken. In doing so, he shows us how easy it is for the oppressed to become comfortable with the tools of oppression.
This is not a question of sympathy for a man with a terrible record. Makedenge has been named in stories of brutal torture. His legacy is one of pain. But justice is not karma, and justice is not the slow decay of the body. Justice is about accountability before the law. To showcase a man’s illness as divine punishment is to abandon the very struggle for due process that Sikhala once claimed to embody. It is to turn politics into a marketplace of curses and blessings, where enemies are left to wither and supporters are assured of their righteousness.
Hon Sikhala’s statement reveals something more than bitterness. It exposes a drift toward a politics rooted in spiritual retribution. In Zimbabwean culture, there is always the lingering belief in karma, the retributal forces that punish wrongdoers across generations. That belief is powerful, and it is easy to see how politicians can harness it.
The frail body of a former tormentor becomes proof that the ancestors are at work, that justice needs no courts or commissions. It feels satisfying to a wounded public, but it is a dangerous path for a nation. Once leaders start declaring who is cursed and who is blessed, there is no limit to who can be cast out.
The contradiction at the heart of Sikhala’s message is striking. He said he forgave the man, and yet he publicly displayed him as an object lesson in the wages of sin.
If that is forgiveness, then what would vengeance look like?
It is a twisted mercy that grants pardon with one hand and announces divine punishment with the other. This kind of forgiveness is not healing but performance, a ritual of humiliation dressed as moral clarity.
For Zimbabweans who dream of a new order, Sikhala’s words should be a warning. They show how quickly the language of liberation can collapse into the language of domination. Today it is an old torturer mocked in his decline. Tomorrow it could be anyone whose suffering is politically convenient.
If sickness is guilt, then the poor are guilty. The unemployed are guilty. The displaced are guilty. And leaders are freed from responsibility, for the people’s misery is no longer a crisis to be solved but a sentence handed down by God.
The opposition has long accused the ruling order of cruelty, of stripping citizens of their humanity. To replace it with another order that thrives on curses and divine verdicts is not liberation. It is simply another gospel of fear. Zimbabwe does not need leaders who read illness as sin and suffering as justice. It needs leaders who understand that sickness is not a verdict, that frailty is part of our shared humanity, and that justice is never satisfied by watching enemies waste away.
Honorable Wiwa Sikhala has every reason to be angry at what was done to him. The scars of torture do not vanish, and the desire for vindication is real. But leadership demands more than anger. It demands a vision that can rise above personal wounds. It demands the ability to imagine justice without cruelty, forgiveness without mockery, and democracy without curses.
If Sikhala cannot step outside the gospel of vengeance, then he is not offering Zimbabwe a new dawn. He is offering another long night, lit only by the fires of bitterness.
The true test of a leader is not how he treats his friends but how he regards his enemies. In mocking the frail, Sikhala has failed that test. And Zimbabwe, battered and weary, cannot afford another leader who confuses retribution with justice.
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