The arrest of Madzibaba Gideon, a self-styled prophet whose real name is Sibiniyo Chikurunhe, and Madzibaba Wonder Kabasa, an elderly man he forced his minor daughter to marry, comes amid a troubling controversy surrounding the marriage of a small child.
On Friday, the two were seen in handcuffs as they led police officers and pathologists to the burial site of another child, buried without the knowledge of Madzibaba Gideon’s former spouse, Memory Mukanairi. During the Friday exhumation procedure, Madzibaba Gideon’s minor daughter, who was forced into the divorctive marriage, was present at the shrine.
Witnesses to the exhumation expressed shock and outrage at Madzibaba Gideon not only having his child buried without telling his wife, but also setting up his daughter’s teenage marriage to an elderly churchgoer.
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Madzibaba Gideon made a disturbance and confronted the police as he angrily objected to his detention and the events at the graveyard. He was ultimately released from more participation in the procedure, though.
Pathologists supervised the exhumation of the body and insisted on denying the media access to the last moments of the procedure.
The body was exhumed, taken to a hospital mortuary, and then reburied at a different cemetery while it was examined post-mortem.