Zim News Blog -NEWS NETWORK

As to be expected, the recent acceptance of a $1 million offer by Chimurenga music legend Thomas Mapfumo from controversial tenderpreneur Wicknell Chivayo has stirred much debate.

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The massive sum—split into two equal payments of $500,000—is a performance fee for Mapfumo to play at Chivayo’s birthday celebration in November and at musician Jah Prayzah’s upcoming wedding.

There are obviously those who are against this supposed deal, seeing it as an extension and endorsement of the questionable accumulation of wealth in Zimbabwe.

Of course, there are also those who see absolutely nothing wrong—obviously including Mapfumo himself—who interprets this as nothing more than a business deal.

In fact, the music guru even packaged this in a recent video clip as “ndezve basa izvi” (this is strictly about work).

However, we need to be honest and clear.

There is a desperate need for Zimbabweans to make a sharp, uncompromising distinction between a legitimate business deal and actively supporting systemic corruption.

Let us look at this through a clear hypothetical lens.

Let’s say Wicknell Chivayo approaches me to write a book on his life—either to write his biography or ghost-write his autobiography—and offers me $1 million.

Surely, can I simply shut my eyes, look at the money, and justify it in terms of “ndezve basa chete”?

Or must I, as a Zimbabwean who lives the daily realities of our struggling economy, consider how Chivayo acquired all that wealth and the subsequent impact on the livelihoods of ordinary citizens?

This is not even about Chivayo’s political leanings.

In the course of Zimbabwe’s history, we have encountered numerous instances of the ruling elite seeking legal assistance from renowned lawyers who are also prominent opposition figures.

I have similarly been approached by top government officials, including the late vice president Phelekezela Mphoko, a former Cabinet minister who was part of those aligned to the late ousted president Robert Mugabe, and also a former minister who recently wanted to tell his liberation struggle history, who were eager to engage me to write their life stories in books.

There would have been absolutely nothing wrong with proceeding with those projects because writing a historical account or offering legal counsel is strictly business.

Nonetheless, for various reasons, including my own personal convictions, we never proceeded with those projects.

Significantly, these people in the ruling elite may not all be clean, but at least they are involved in known, above-board activities that earn them significant wealth.

It is fundamentally different when it comes to Wicknell Chivayo in particular.

What does he actually do?

Where does his money come from?

We have all heard the endless, jaw-dropping scandals.

From the infamous $5 million advance payment for the ill-fated Gwanda Solar Power Plant to the staggering R800 million suspiciously deposited into his business accounts by South African company Ren-Form CC.

That company itself was handed a highly inflated R1.1 billion by Zimbabwe’s Treasury ostensibly for election materials—charging as much as R23 million for a server that ordinarily costs R90,000.

This places Chivayo in a class of his own.

Wealth attained through these questionable, highly suspect means becomes deeply problematic.

These amounts are staggering, and these are only the deals that brave journalists and investigators have exposed to the public domain.

I cannot begin to imagine what we are not aware of.

In fact, how can someone spend millions of dollars just buying fleets of luxury cars and giving away massive amounts of cash to various individuals, be it musicians, religious leaders, or political players?

Where is all that money coming from, especially for someone with no real, known, legitimate, and productive business enterprises?

Is this not money that could have been used to equip our dilapidated public hospitals, where thousands of poor Zimbabweans needlessly lose their lives each year due to the unavailability of critical care, basic medication, or functional machinery?

Is this not money that could have significantly improved basic service delivery across the country, thereby uplifting the standards of living for our struggling people?

How then can anyone with a conscience accept any of that money under the pretext of “ndezve basa izvi”?

As such, what we saw with Thomas Mapfumo can never simply be characterized as a harmless “business deal.”

Accepting money from a deeply tainted individual with no known legitimate source of income—money that is likely the proceeds of questionable deals and state plunder—makes the recipient morally complicit.

There can never be any justification.

How will Mapfumo explain this to the woman currently battling for her life at a underfunded hospital in Hurungwe without essential medication or lifesaving equipment?

There are those with the audacity to claim that Mapfumo rejecting this offer would not have changed anything anyway.

That is a shocking, highly irresponsible, and defeatist statement to make.

Should we all now allow, promote, or endorse corruption simply because fighting it appears to be a futile battle?

Let us not justify our own lust and greed, as some in our society clearly desire a similar windfall to befall them.

Let us remember that the people fighting corruption, injustice, and poverty do not all necessarily think they will win this war in their lifetimes.

But that can never mean giving up, or worse, joining in the repressive system of plunder.

We stick to our principles in the hope that after playing our small part today, we can pass on the clean, untainted baton to the next generation to finally reach the finish line.

We cannot afford to drop the baton stick.

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There is a recurring theater in African diplomacy that would be comical if its consequences were not so deadly.

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It is the spectacle of high-ranking continental emissaries descending upon African capitals, checking into five-star hotels, and delivering soaring speeches about resource sovereignty.

All the while, they ignore the devastating poverty unfolding just outside their air-conditioned windows.

A stark and painful example of this disconnect occurred today at the New Parliament Building in Mt Hampden.

This was during the launch of the African Peer Review Mechanism National Programme of Action.

Ms Claudine Sigam, representing the African Minerals Development Centre and the African Union, stood before the architecture of Zimbabwe’s ruling elite to shower praise on President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

She lauded the government’s ban on raw lithium exports, enthusiastically repeating the ruling party’s signature mantra, “nyika inovakwa nevene vayo” (the nation is built by its own people), and proudly declaring that “African minerals belong to African people.”

On paper, the policy of domestic value addition is commendable.

No one disputes that Africa must stop exporting raw materials only to buy back finished products at a premium.

But when these high-sounding clichés are uttered by continental institutions in a vacuum, completely divorced from the grim reality of systemic plunder, they cease to be progressive policy.

Instead, they become a moral shield for misgovernance.

To claim that “African minerals belong to African people” in contemporary Zimbabwe is a cruel joke.

The ordinary Zimbabwean does not own these minerals; they merely live on top of them, often facing forced displacement to make way for elite-connected mining syndicates.

The real beneficiaries of this underground wealth are a predatory ruling class and their international enablers.

One does not need to look far for the evidence.

The explosive Al Jazeera Gold Mafia investigative documentary laid bare what citizens have long known: a highly sophisticated, state-facilitated smuggling and money-laundering syndicate operating at the absolute highest echelons of power.

Zimbabwe is estimated to lose between US$3 billion and US$4 billion every single year to the illegal leakage and misappropriation of its gold, diamonds, and lithium.

To put that staggering figure into perspective, consider what US$3 billion could do for a nation in agony.

This is not just abstract capital; it is the difference between life and death for millions.

This stolen wealth could comfortably equip every single public hospital in Zimbabwe with functioning radiotherapy machines, basic medicines, and decent salaries for striking doctors and nurses, saving thousands of lives every year.

It is money that could fully fund the modernization of neglected rural schools, replacing crumbling mud-and-thatch classrooms with digital-ready learning centers, finally giving the rural child a fair shot at life.

It is money that could lay the pipes to ensure clean, running water flows into the home of every single citizen, permanently banishing the specter of cholera.

Yet, to the African Peer Review Mechanism and its sister organs, these human tragedies seem entirely irrelevant.

These institutions appear to operate on a unspoken pact of mutual preservation: hear no evil, see no evil, and speak only in the safe, sanitized language of technical progress.

What, then, is the actual purpose of these peer review bodies?

If they lack the courage to call out the blatant looting of a nation’s inheritance, they are not instruments of accountability; they are public relations firms for autocrats.

They exist to massage the egos of sitting presidents, providing them with international legitimacy in exchange for choreographed tours of showcase projects.

They allow leaders to wrap themselves in the sacred shroud of Pan-Africanism while they pick the pockets of the African people.

Pan-Africanism was never meant to be a suicide pact among elites.

It was conceived as a radical movement of solidarity for the liberation and dignity of the African citizen.

When modern institutions weaponize Pan-African rhetoric to ignore the complicity of a government stealing from its own populace, they betray the very founders of the liberation struggle.

The ordinary citizenry has seen through the charade.

We understand that as long as peer reviewers can enjoy the hospitality of state banquets, the actual welfare of the people will remain secondary.

These continental institutions must find the backbone to look past the superficial brilliance of a raw lithium ban and confront the dark underbelly of mineral smuggling.

Until they do, they will remain utterly useless, expensive, and deeply irrelevant to the survival of the African people.

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