What Kind of Human Being Does This?

It is a gruesome and gut-wrenching death to discuss or talk about lightly. But it deserves to be discussed and talked about all the same, not lightly though. It also gives little comfort that the alleged killer of the 22-year-old Ms. Elizabeth Mudenda, of Zambian nationality, is a Ghanaian resident of Togolese nationality who is reported to be currently on the lam. It gives little comfort, if any at all, because it is a heinous crime of disconsolate and unbearable proportions that we often casually presume to be far below the moral compass and threshold of civilized humanity. But, of course, it also painfully reminds us of the fact that as biological biped animals, the worst is often not very far from us, or within our reach. I am talking about the at once brutal and grisly recent murder of the aforementioned young Zambian woman migrant or immigrant in the Fiave suburb of Ho, the Volta regional capital, or municipality, by a man, for the want of the most appropriate descriptor, called Augustine Fiagbedzi, who is also described as the boyfriend or lover of the late Lizzy Mudenda (See “Slain Zambian Woman Buried in Ho” GhanaianTimes.com.gh/ Ghanaweb.com 12/16/21).

I have been keeping this brief news item for a couple of weeks, with the intention of at least writing a paragraph or two about the same. For, something deeply within the cockles of my soul tells me that the butchering death of Ms. Elizabeth Mudenda must not be allowed to pass completely unremarked. The slain woman might not have attained a high socioeconomic status in her very fragile and short life. But it also goes without saying that the value of her life and existence was no less significant than that of the members of the Ho-Fiave community in which she was so barbarically hacked to death and then packed up like pieces of meat into what has been described as a “double-decker” refrigerator inside the bedroom of Ms. Mudenda’s alleged boyfriend.

Now, what sort of “boyfriend” inflicts this kind of unpardonable and heinous act of criminal depravity on the body of the woman that he claims to love and thus be most protective of? I also suppose that what partly inspired and motivated me to keep this horrific piece of news story on file with the intent of commenting on it in the offing, was the fact that the deceased woman had traveled so long and so far to finally arrive at her Ghanaian destination, where she was apparently of the firm belief that she could eke out a better livelihood for herself than what was available to her in her home and native country of Zambia, only to be so wickedly lured into an intimate relationship with the He-Devil himself.

Then also, I suppose that what partly motivated and inspired me to want to keep this brief heart-breaking news story on file and comment on the same, was also the fact that during the 1970s, one of my maternal uncles had the chance and privilege of living in the Zambian copper-mining township of Kitwe for some two years at a Christian Leadership Institute, where the future Rev.-Col. Emmanuel (Kwaku) Boapea Boamah Brown, Chaplain-General of the Ghana Armed Forces, would obtain a diploma or non-degree certificate in Christian Leadership. My Uncle Brown had a couple of very delightful and juicy stories to tell about the very pretty, romantic and hardworking women of Kitwe, which, at least for now, yours truly would rather prefer to keep very close to the vest, that is, between just the two of us, that is, the teller of these tales and the privileged listener of the same, although My Dear Uncle Brown has been dead for nearly a half decade now, if memory is not playing any of its well-known funny tricks and pranks on me.

It almost seems like just yesterday. You see, when raw and barbaric death like the one meted Lizzy Mudenda descends on a family, and I am the grandnephew of Nana Akyea Mensah (Barima Ohemeng) of Kyebi and Akyem-Apedwa, “The Smashingly Handsome Man from Kyebi, that is, time also comes to seem to be at a virtual standstill. And the world also comes to seem to have effectively ground to a screeching halt. That is how yours truly feels about this particular death, whose grisly and heinous brutality he was almost lickety-split tempted to both politicize and ethnicize or tribalize, as it does not exude the kind of image and/or reputation that a bona fide Ghanaian native or citizen would Zambians and our other Continental African kinsmen and women form about us.

Alas, the sort of apocalyptic and catastrophic death visited on Lizzy Mudenda by Augustine Fiagbedzi is not an isolated incident or one that is relatively few and far between. Unfortunately, it happens all the time. It may not be relatively riotously rampant, but it is also not as rare as to be deemed outlandish or practically farfetched. It is all too insistently human, consistently and brutally so. Rest-in-Peace does not fit into the emotionally uncontrollable mood here. It may be just a matter of time and therapy or healing here. Except that this wound within me appears to only fester with time. Divine Providence redeem us all, including the human animal who created such an indelible mess of shame and anger.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

December 30, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]