A 13-year-old boy trying to collect dead fish to pay his school fees was killed by a crocodile in southern Zimbabwe last week.
Owen Chianga and his friend Liberty Ruzivo, 15, were attacked by two crocodiles at about lunchtime last Thursday while they were fishing in the Save River near the village of Birchenough Bridge.
Chauruva Ruzivo, Liberty's father, ran to the river when he heard his son screaming for help, he told the local Manica Post newspaper. There were two crocodiles and he was able to extricate his son from the jaws of one.
"I rushed to the scene and saw [Liberty] wrestling with one of the crocodiles. By the time I arrived, his friend had been overpowered and dragged into the dam. I held my son by his upper body and pulled him from the jaws of the crocodile," he said.
The boys had waded further into the water than usual after noticing dead fish floating in the water, possibly as a result of pollution from diamond mines in nearby Marange. In 2014 up to 1,000 cattle were reported to have died because of pollution in the river.
A drought that has dragged on for more than two years has made food scarce in Zimbabwe and so the boys waded in to collect the fish, which they could sell to villagers.
Mr Ruzivo said that Owen, whose body was found in a tunnel on Friday, would often go fishing because his father was disabled and unable to pay school fees. He added that his son had been treated at a local hospital for a wounded heel.
A local councillor said that a traditional leader in the area recently lost all his cattle to crocodiles.
Zimbabwe's economy has been in crisis since the early 2000s, which caused a violent land-grab campaign by the veterans of the country's war of independence. White farmers were forced to flee and the country, which used to be known as the bread basket of Africa, suffered economic collapse.
The country has been gripped by a liquidity crisis for much of the past year, leading to riots after the government was unable to pay many of its workers.
