UZ Student Hangs Self, Parents Blame Hip Hop

A University of Zimbabwe student from Bulawayo has hung himself at his home.

: Suicide is complex bayat / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA

Kranos Nyangari, 21, recorded a video and sent messages to his friends announcing his death and requesting that he be cremated and his ashes deposited around the yard at home. The third year electrical engineering student also sent details of his bank account, Ecocash details and passwords.

His distraught father blamed the ‘satanic’ influence of hip hop music, a genre he said his son was obsessed with.

I believe my son was being initiated into satanism through this hip-hop music.

The reaction of the father is symptomatic of the almost non-existent understanding of mental health issues. When one doesn’t understand something it is put down to demonic influences.

Now, suicide is an extreme solution to issues and is difficult to understand. Depression is a lonely place and to think that a genre in isolation can infuse those ideas into someone is far-fetched. This is not to suggest music cannot make people feel some type of way. The music cannot work unless one is vulnerable to certain insecurities and emotions. For example, a love song may not work for someone who is not remotely interested in being in love or is heartbroken.

Sadly for Krainos we will never really know what was happening with him and that is where the crux of the issue is. We are not documenting what the realities of people so as to prevent future tragedies. With young Krainos, it will be death by suicide and that is end of it. Will anyone study his life, and all that to see what pushed him to the end? How much of an analysis of the video will there be so as to make sure that we are certain of specific details?

Will we let the family go on with the belief that there was a demonic influence? Is that the best we can do?

Krainos’s story is in The Chronicle (Zimbabwe)