EX-convict on mission to reduce crime

AN ex-convict, who featured on a local drama Guluva which was showcased on Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation television in 2013, has teamed up with different churches and organisations in educating people on the dangers of committing crime.

Nqobile Mbele (41) who featured on the local drama as Khesare came up with the idea while at Khami Medium Prison, where he was serving a four-year jail term for unlawful entry and robbery.

B-Metro visited the ex-convict last week at his Njube suburb home and he took the opportunity to share his experiences from his 10-year stay in prison.
The two separate convictions gave him vast experience on the dangers that come with committing crime.

“Before I left prison in 2016, I decided to reflect on my life as I discovered that 10 years of my life had gone to waste. From that process I discovered that my life was messed by the separation of my parents while I was still a young boy.

“The separation of my parents saw me being raised under the guardianship of my grandmother and this arrangement deprived me of my right to experience the love of my parents,” he said.

Mbele said the differences that broke his parents’ marriage left his mother a bitter woman who later started portraying his father as a heartless man that did not care about him.

“Each time my mother spoke about my father she only told me the negative stories and this made me think he was an evil man, who did not even care about me.
“But as I grew up I realised that my mother was a bitter woman who could not accept that the two were incompatible. As a way of fighting back she told me not to look for him but that destroyed opportunities of bonding with my father,” he said.

The ex-convict said while under the guardianship of his grandmother he never got all the requirements expected by any child and with time this later forced him to start breaking and stealing in neighbours’ homes.

The habit of stealing matured with time as he later teamed up with other young boys in similar circumstances and started terrorising members of the community.
“The environment that I grew up under actually moulded me to be who I am today. I was deprived of almost everything so it made me come up with ‘solutions’ to situations at hand.

“While growing up under the guardianship of my grandmother I met boys my age who had similar problems.
“We started stealing in the neighbourhood as a way of bailing ourselves from the problems we were experiencing on a daily basis,” he said.

Mbele said they were caught after some time on numerous counts after stealing property valued at US$20 000 in 2003.
Upon being taken to court, he was found guilty and was sentenced to four years in prison.

“When I went to prison for the first time I was very young and if I am not mistaken I was only 17.
Life was not easy being in prison for the first time but people that I met made my life a lot easier as they supported me but some gave me new ideas on how to steal without being caught.

“Those lectures hardened me and forced me to continue committing crimes once I completed my jail term,” he said.
Instead of quitting crime the ex-convict felt there was a future in committing crime as he continued committing similar crimes soon after serving his sentence.

Mbele said he continued to commit crime as that was his only source of income, having dropped out of school due to lack of funds.
He said soon after completing his first sentence he went back to the community and continued terrorising unsuspecting members of the community stealing their valuables.

The community, which had fallen victim to his new tricks later teamed up and formed a neighbourhood watch committee which held patrols at night.
The committee later mastered the new tricks and managed to ambush the problem child and they took him back to the police as he was caught in one of the houses robbing them armed with a knife.

“Soon after being caught I was taken to the police, my case was taken to court, i was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison.
“When I got to prison for the second time it was after I had been convicted of unlawful entry and robbery and that was in 2009. On arrival in prison I met some of the people I had served with before.

“While in prison I was exposed to various rehabilitation programmes and from the lectures that we got from the rehabilitation officers I saw the dangers of being a habitual criminal. We were also urged to look for areas of interest that we could develop ourselves in.

“I later chose to develop myself into an actor and from that move I got a role in a local drama called Guluva and in that drama I showcased what I used to do before I was brought to prison,”he said.

Mbele said Guluva got an overwhelming response from the ZTV viewers such that he realised that media had power and in the process he started penning his own concept with the intention of touching the lives of criminals.

“When I came up with this concept I was basing it on the old adage which says ‘You set a thief to catch a thief’. I have been in prison for 10 years and I have seen it all so I am here to educate my fellow brothers and sisters, who are into crime, on the dangers that come with the trade.

“So the campaigns that I am doing with different stakeholders are meant to educate the youths and people in general on the dangers of drugs and what they can lead you to.

“The aim of this project is to reduce the crime rate in our country as most people out there are not formally employed and they are tempted to get into crime as a means of survival.

“In our campaigns we share ideas on which projects can be started by young people out there for survival and these range from farming, welding to construction among many others.

“We are going to be visiting different schools and some areas where youths meet spreading the word with the aim of also eradicating the culture of abusing drugs,” he ended.