Tendai Ruben Mbofana
Yesterday, President Emmerson Mnangagwa faced one of the most humiliating moments of his presidency when the lights went out in Parliament as he delivered his State of the Nation Address (SONA).
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What was meant to be a grand display of authority and progress turned into a literal and symbolic blackout—an unintended but brutally honest reflection of Zimbabwe’s true state of affairs.
There was, in fact, no clearer and more truthful “State of the Nation” than that power outage itself.
It cut through all the usual propaganda, stripping away the sugarcoating and empty rhetoric about “progress,” “stability,” and “improving livelihoods.”
In that moment of darkness, the electricity failure spoke louder than the president’s carefully crafted speech.
It told the story of millions of Zimbabweans who live this reality every day—those who have grown accustomed to enduring an average of 16-hour power cuts daily, while being told their country is on the road to upper middle-income status.
The irony could not have been sharper.
Those in power have long insulated themselves from the harshness of life under their governance.
President Mnangagwa and his inner circle of ministers, officials, and business elites live comfortably insulated from the blackouts that torment ordinary homes and businesses.
They are shielded from the hardships of power cuts, with ZESA instructed not to disconnect their residences or offices.
Their homes are equipped with generators, solar systems, and fuel allowances—comforts that leave them oblivious to the daily frustrations endured by the people they govern.
Yet, fate has a peculiar way of humbling even the most powerful.
Despite all the careful preparations to shield the president from Zimbabwe’s chronic power crisis, he was forced—if only for a few minutes—to experience what the nation endures daily.
According to media reports, Mnangagwa was visibly furious, while Speaker of Parliament Jacob Mudenda reportedly warned that those responsible for the embarrassing power outage would “regret the day they were born.”
This over-the-top reaction was followed by an official press statement from the Clerk of Parliament, apologizing to the president and pledging to investigate the matter.
The statement blamed a tripped circuit breaker while the Parliament was running on a hired generator, explaining that power was not being supplied even though the generator was still running.
In fact, fresh details published by ZimLive have revealed that Parliament had deliberately sidelined ZESA, opting instead to power the event using a generator to avoid a repeat of last year’s blackout during the national budget presentation.
A letter dated October 21, 2025, confirmed that Parliament instructed the Ministry of Local Government to ensure the generator was “serviced, fully tested and confirmed fit for uninterrupted operation.”
ZESA was to remain on standby.
Yet, despite all these precautions, the system still failed—precisely because the automatic switch-over had not been correctly configured by engineers from the local government ministry.
Ironically, in trying to avoid embarrassment by cutting off ZESA, Parliament only managed to stage a far greater spectacle of failure.
Mnangagwa had to finish his SONA under torchlight—an aide holding a flashlight over his speech as he read on.
Government spokesman Ndavaningi Mangwana tried to spin the disaster, tweeting a photo of the scene with the caption: “DETERMINATION PERSONIFIED. Even a power outage couldn’t stop a determined President Mnangagwa from fulfilling his constitutional duty.”
But that spin fooled no one.
For the millions watching, this was no symbol of resilience.
It was a symbol of dysfunction.
It captured, in one moment, everything that has gone wrong in Zimbabwe under Mnangagwa’s administration—corruption, mismanagement, incompetence, and misplaced priorities.
Instead of threatening to “trace the culprits and deal with them accordingly,” as Mudenda did, the regime should direct its rage toward the real culprits: the Zvigananda—those corrupt tenderpreneurs and politically connected elites who have plundered the energy sector for years.
Consider the Gwanda Solar Project.
Wicknell Chivayo was advanced US$5 million in 2015 to develop a 100 MW solar power plant in Gwanda.
A decade later, not a single watt of electricity has been generated from that project.
Instead, Chivayo has paraded his obscene wealth on social media—buying luxury cars, showering musicians and celebrities with cash, and becoming a poster child for state-sanctioned impunity.
Despite failing to deliver, he remains untouchable, openly bragging about his closeness to Mnangagwa and other senior officials.
Then there is the Dema Diesel Power Plant, another dubious project handed to Sakunda Holdings, a company linked to Kudakwashe Tagwirei—another of Mnangagwa’s inner-circle businessmen.
The project, which was supposed to provide emergency power, was riddled with irregularities.
The contract was awarded without proper tender procedures, and the government paid exorbitant tariffs for the power produced.
Yet, like Chivayo, Tagwirei remains above reproach—shielded by political connections and immense influence.
Today, he is even touted by some within ZANU-PF as Mnangagwa’s preferred successor.
This is where the regime’s fury should be directed.
Not at technicians or clerks who may have failed to configure a circuit breaker—but at those who have systematically looted billions of dollars meant to end Zimbabwe’s energy crisis once and for all.
The blackouts in Parliament are not isolated incidents.
They are the logical outcome of years of corruption and mismanagement in the energy sector.
They are the physical manifestation of a system where accountability is non-existent, where politically connected businessmen are rewarded for failure, and where the poor bear the brunt of elite greed.
What happened in Parliament on Tuesday was poetic justice.
For once, the darkness that ordinary Zimbabweans endure every night descended on the seat of power itself.
It was as if the universe conspired to expose the hollowness of the regime’s rhetoric.
The regime’s response, however, was predictable—rage, threats, and promises of investigations.
Yet, this anger is misplaced.
How can those responsible for the collapse of the energy sector pretend to be victims of sabotage when they are, in fact, the architects of the very crisis that embarrassed them?
It is high time the Mnangagwa administration stopped scapegoating low-level staff and started addressing the root causes of the country’s persistent power shortages.
That means revisiting failed contracts, prosecuting those who have abused public funds, and prioritizing genuine investment in power generation.
Zimbabwe’s installed capacity—mainly from Hwange and Kariba—has long been outstripped by demand.
Yet, rather than fix this structural deficit, the government has poured billions into vanity projects and corrupt procurement deals.
The result is that while ordinary citizens sit in darkness, the powerful bask in the glow of ill-gotten wealth
So, instead of threatening to make someone “regret the day they were born,” the ruling elite should look in the mirror.
The blackout that humiliated the president was not caused by sabotage—it was caused by years of corruption, incompetence, and neglect.
The real culprits are not the engineers or technicians at Parliament.
They are the Zvigananda who loot under the protection of power, the tenderpreneurs who profit from national suffering, and the leaders who enable them.
Until they are held accountable, Zimbabwe will remain in darkness—both literally and figuratively.
- Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to WhatsApp or Call: +263715667700| +263782283975, or email: mbofana.tendairuben73@gmail.com, or visit website: https://mbofanatendairuben.news.blog/
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