The late Chief Mabhikwa of Lupane died due to excessive loss of blood after he was involved in a road traffic accident, according to post-mortem results.
Chief Mabhikwa, born Nichodemus Vusumuzi Khumalo, died after his Isuzu twin-cab vehicle collided head-on with a haulage truck on the 195km peg along Bulawayo-Victoria Falls Road on Sunday night.
The accident occurred just 6km from his homestead in Jotsholo.
He was ferried to St Luke’s Hospital in Lupane where he died on Monday.
Chief Mabhikwa’s body was taken to Bulawayo on Monday afternoon for a post-mortem at Mpilo Central Hospital on the same day.
Family spokesperson Donald Khumalo told Chronicle that the results of the post-mortem revealed that Chief Mabhikwa lost a lot of blood. He said:
The results of the post-mortem are out and they indicated that Chief Mabhikwa suffered severe haemorrhaging, due to the accident and this caused his untimely death.
The results came out on the day that his body was taken to the hospital.
Another relative who spoke to CITE revealed that some of the motorists who arrived at the scene of the accident failed to extricate him from the mangled vehicle as he was trapped inside. Said the relative:
He was involved in an accident around 2100 hours in the evening only to reach St Luke’s Hospital after midnight. We are talking about a provincial hospital which had no emergency ambulance.
They (other motorists) failed to assist him since his lower body was trapped and they had no expertise on how to assist, so by the time he got to the hospital he had already lost a lot of blood, with a dislocated/ fractured hip bone.
Chief Mabhikwa, who died aged 28, made history when he became the youngest chief when he replaced his father Edwin Khumalo in 2012 at the age of 18.
He was born on 24 September 1993 and attended Jotsholo Primary and Fatima High schools.
Chief Mabhikwa attended the Herbert Chitepo School of Ideology (a ZANU PF ideological reorientation school) at the age of 19.
He also obtained a Diploma in Information and Communication Technology at Boston City College South Africa in 2012.
He is survived by a son.