A recent string of terrible car accidents here is seen as another sign of ancestors' anger. Such suspicions crop up especially when an accident kills many people, or prominent ones such as Susan Tsvangirai, the wife of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.
She died in March after a truck sideswiped the Tsvangirais' SUV at a place known as 52, on a bad 35-mile stretch of road an hour or so south of Harare, the capital, where the spirits' wrath is feared the most.
Days later, 15 people were injured when a truck collided with their bus at 52 -- named for the kilometer marker -- on their way back from her burial.
On April 16, 29 people died when a bus plunged into the Munyati River on the same stretch of road.
And just a few miles closer to Harare on the same road, a row of dented black gasoline drums on a bridge over the Pimbi River is a chilling reminder of the 11 traders killed in 2007 when a bus crashed through the concrete barrier into the river. Just after Christmas that year, 12 members of one family were killed when a bus hit their truck.
--
Regardless of beliefs, part of the problem is the last decade of economic crisis: Roads are left unrepaired. Drivers can't afford new tires.
The horror of it worries Andrew Zhakata Chisvu, the chief metekedza, or traditional leader, from a place named Just in Time. As a Christian, he blames part of it on bad roads and worse drivers. But he also fears that the rash of bad accidents is a punishment.
"Why is it happening here only?" he asks.
The chief's round thatched hut is at the end of a rugged track near the town of Chivhu, which spreads along the bad road. A hillock of corncobs lies drying, a dog is curled asleep on a mound of sunflower seeds, and goats bob home in the evening light.
Greeting the chief, strangers clap their hands together silently in respect. He sits solemnly in a tall-backed wooden chair, wearing a tattered straw fedora, an ancient jacket and rubber sandals. Behind, the sun paints an extravagant red blaze across the evening sky, as if to emphasize his royal blood.
His teeth are like crooked gravestones; he speaks in a whisper.
"Some drivers, when they're passing that area, they see people with their eyes, when there's nobody on the road. We think the spirits of the dead may still be loitering around there," he murmurs. "So we need to do a ceremony, a cleansing, we call it.
