Fidelis Munyoro
Chief Court Reporter
Madzibaba Ishmael Chokurongerwa’s spiritual garments have been traded for prison garb.
The once-feared apostolic sect leader, draped in white robes and wielding the authority of “divine” revelation, now stands stripped of sanctity, his fate sealed behind bars.
The clang of the courtroom echoed like a final church bell tolling the end of his reign.
Twenty years.
That is how long the self-proclaimed prophet will spend in prison, convicted of raping and impregnating a minor congregant, his own spiritual daughter.
It was a verdict steeped in sorrow and fury.
Trial magistrate Mrs Estere Chivasa spared no words in her rebuke of Chokurongerwa, calling him a “notorious and evil” man who wielded his religious influence like a cudgel over the minds and bodies of his followers.
“Church leaders are expected to serve as moral compasses for their congregants,” she declared, her voice heavy with the weight of betrayal.
“But what the accused did is the complete opposite of these expectations.”
The courtroom sat hushed as she continued, her words painting a picture of spiritual manipulation and sexual predation.
“His moral blameworthiness is exceptionally high. How many brilliant minds has this man brainwashed and destroyed? No one truly knows. He turned his congregants into his personal possessions.”
The image of the girl he raped – young, indoctrinated, terrified – hung in the air.
She had carried his child in silence, her lips sealed by fear and twisted loyalty.
A DNA test later confirmed what she had been too scared to say: the man she called Madzibaba was the father.
And though HIV-negative, he had exposed her to the risk of sexually transmitted infections, recklessly and remorselessly.
“It is time for the court to draw a line and say, ‘enough is enough,’” Magistrate Chivasa concluded.
And with that, the legal sledge-hammer fell on a man whose sins had long been whispered behind the sacred veil of religion.
Chokurongerwa (55) was no stranger to the law. In 2015, he was convicted after leading a violent attack on anti-riot police officers during a raid on his Budiriro 2 shrine.
The scene had been apocalyptic religious zealots singing “Hondo yepfumo neropa” while wielding sticks and staffs against State authority.
Bloodied officers and journalists lay in the dust, beaten in the name of a twisted gospel.
When the law came knocking, Madzibaba Ishmael did not stay to face the music. He vanished, fugitive for seven months, until police finally caught him on January 2, 2015.
Back then, it was violence. Now, it is sexual abuse. And this time, he could not run.
The court noted his previous conviction, and his pattern of manipulation grew clearer.
Behind his veil of holiness, Chokurongerwa had crafted a sect ruled by fear, mysticism, and control.
His teachings forbade education, hospitals, mobile phones, and even national IDs.
His word was law.
His followers lived in clay huts and believed him when he said he was God. He taught fathers to “check” their daughters’ virginity, himself a prophet of perversion.
His own children were barred from school.
His followers, many of them women and girls, were stripped of agency, left to the mercy of a man who used the pulpit as a predator’s perch.
State prosecutor Mr Oscar Madhume was commended for pushing for a victim impact assessment, revealing how deeply Chokurongerwa’s manipulations had woven through the minds of his congregants.
The victim, whose childhood was stolen, had not even realised she had been violated. Her silence was not consent; it was conditioning.
Though he faced three counts of rape, only one against the minor, led to conviction.
Yet the DNA told a fuller story, three children, from three victims.
The evidence was irrefutable, even as two charges fell away due to the victims being of legal age at the time.
The court cleared him of other charges of ill-treatment of minors, breaches of burial laws, but the core of the case remained.
A man cloaked in religion had preyed upon the weak, and finally, justice had caught up with him.
Once, Madzibaba Ishmael stood before hundreds, calling himself divine. Now, he stands alone, condemned by the very society he claimed to transcend.
The shrine is silent.
The prophet has fallen. And as the prison gates close behind him, the echoes of his crimes linger, lessons etched in the suffering of the innocent, and in the firm resolve of a justice system that finally said: “no more”.
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