Government official Ndavaningi “Nick” Mangwana has denied reports that Sungura musician Tatenda Pinjisi died due to a lack of painkillers in the hospital.
Pinjisi was injured in a car accident near Norton on Friday and died from his injuries at Sally Mugabe Hospital on Sunday, April 13, 2025.
A viral video showed him in the hospital, pleading for painkillers, sparking public anger and criticism of Zimbabwe’s healthcare system.
Mangwana, the permanent secretary for Information, defended the health system on social media on April 17.
He insisted hospitals are stocked with basic medicines and shared photos from a Gokwe hospital pharmacy to support his claim. Said Mangwana:
Today, we asked to be given access to the dispensary at Gokwe District after ‘Pain Eeze’ had become a buzzword in our cyberspace.
So we decided to make a random visit to a far-flung hospital and check the state of things in the pharmacy. We were impressed.
Responding to criticism on X, Nick Mangwana denied claims that Pinjisi died due to a lack of painkillers.
He said Pinjisi died from injuries sustained in the car accident, not from a shortage of medication, and added that pain alone does not cause death.
Mangwana also stated that Pinjisi received appropriate pain treatment. He wrote:
Munhu haana kufa nekuti pakashaikwa mushonga. Akafa nekuti he was fatally injured in an accident. He had been given adequate painkillers of the correct strength by the clinicians.
In any case, someone doesn’t die because they are in pain. And this particular had already been given stronger pain killers intramuscularly and intravenously.
A person who has suffered a head trauma can experience confusion and shout anything. It doesn’t make that a clinical indication that clinicians should supply. They are trained to exercise their expert clinical judgement. Which they did.
Three people, two of Pinjisi’s band members and a female passenger they had picked up en route to Kadoma, died at the scene of the accident.
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