Commonly called mbingas for their penchant for luxury, many of Zimbabwe's richest men and women are vessels for the ruling party's looting of state coffers.
Establishing a business in the late 1980s, soon after Zimbabwe's independence, was "like hunting with bare hands" for former teacher Gilbert Machokoto*. It was only through sheer perseverance that he, aged 35, managed to start a transport business with one small truck, ferrying goods from farms to the market. What he did was a novelty at that time, when all successful business people in the country were white, and black entrepreneurs were limited to retail shops in black communities and petrol stations. Bank loans for those who had no collateral were practically impossible to get.
Due to his lack of resources, Machokoto's new business failed at first, but his efforts paid off after a few years. He acquired a bigger cross-border truck, then several trucks. In his community, it earned him the nickname "The Boss". "At the time, when doors closed in my face, I was bitter and angry," he reminisces. "But I took it as a learning period."
Indigenisation
Machokoto looked forward to more and new successes when the new government announced redistributive policies, commonly called indigenisation, and an empowerment vehicle called the Indigenous Business Development Centre (IBDC) was formed in 1990. He immediately became a member. "We were happy," he recalls, lauding IBDC member benefits such as access to finance at well below market interest rates; preferential allocation of government contracts and markets to blacks; and anti-trust legislation to control the monopoly position of white capital. The new policies also included the deregulation of laws and procedures hindering young black enterprises and directives issued to financial institutions to finance black businesses. "All this benefited our marginalised local people."
"Funding allocations were not transparent"
In four years, IBDC membership ballooned to 8,000, spread across the whole country. Between 1990 and 1994, the association received over US$500 million from state coffers. The World Council of Churches Development Fund contributed US$30 million. The funds were to be disbursed to beneficiaries through local banks, bypassing their strict collateral demands. According to some who have referenced the IBDC's history, many local black businesses indeed benefited, and the white domination of the economy was dented, though not immediately ended. Black IBDC members received government contracts which had previously benefited only white businesses; for example, during the 1991-92 drought, when the state gave Cargo Carriers, a white-owned transporter, a contract to bring maize from South Africa, the IBDC successfully pushed for its members to be subcontracted. Some of Zimbabwe's most established black businesspeople today got to be where they are now thanks to IBDC support. IBDC founding Secretary-General, Strive Masiyiwa - he was assisted to grow his engineering business, helped to branch out into construction and telecoms, and is now Zimbabwe's richest man - became a role model for many an aspiring entrepreneur. A contemporary, boxing and music promoter Phillip Chiyangwa, was enabled to form a large business in footwear, steel, and real estate.
Denouncing corruption from London
Early empowerment beneficiary and now reportedly Zimbabwe's richest man, Strive Masiyiwa, left his country in 2000 following a clash with the government, which staunchly maintained its telecoms monopoly. After building up a new business empire in the UK, Masiyiwa started to denounce corruption in 2013, writing on his Facebook account: "We would not, as Africans, need aid from anybody if we tackle corruption; no child would sleep hungry if we tackle corruption; there would be no injustice, if we tackle corruption; every child will be in school, if we tackle corruption." He gave examples to illustrate how his business had suffered from corrupt political elite practices. "Two very powerful politicians (in an unnamed country) demanded that I pay them a bribe of US$8 million to keep the contract ... [When he refused to pay] they had our contract cancelled and we were thrown out. They replaced us with one of our largest global competitors from Europe, whose executives immediately paid the bribes." In another post he added that no entity is immune from the practices, stating: "Ironically some of the worst corruption I have witnessed, was not in governments, but in the private sector."
But Gilbert Machokoto says he soon found out that "funding allocations were not transparent." While many "ordinary" members, including himself, failed to access any subsidies, those who manoeuvred themselves close to ruling politicians benefited more than others.
Like Machokoto, Tsitsi Chitiyo*, now 62, was also overlooked. As a cross-border trader, selling Zimbabwe-made furniture in South Africa, she had seen opportunities in other neighbouring countries, which could, she thought, expand her business. But when she tried to get loans, she was sidelined, "like many women with promising business ideas," she says. Except for a few "known figures", most loans went to "male counterparts, some of whom used their close links to the ruling party and muscle to acquire the funds." In Chitiyo's case, after failing to get loans, a diversion into consumer goods retail eventually caused her to go bankrupt amid cheap imports from South Africa and Zimbabwe's notorious hyperinflation. Today, broke and full of regret, she still feels that if she had accessed finance at that time, "things might have been better."
"Many women were sidelined"
Both Machokoto and Chitiyo say they observed how ruling party representatives - or "vultures" as they call them - gradually took over the IBDC leadership. Certain politicians and politically connected individuals "sought to control the funds and membership for political gain," they say.
Clientelism and loyalty
That the ruling party was intentionally "building a strong alliance between friendly businesspeople, the state, and the ruling party," is confirmed by senior lecturer in Public Management and Governance at the University of Zimbabwe, Dr Hardlife Zvoushe, in a 2017 study on the history of indigenisation. Zvoushe notes that "indigenisation benefits were given only to black businesspeople who were willing to be part of the ruling party's ever-extending patronage network that solely depended on state support for its survival ... Clientelism, cronyism, loyalty, and political correctness were major criteria for accessing benefits."
Machokoto, Chitiyo, and others fought this development, they say, but lost. Newspaper reports from those days mention "squabbles over money" and complaints from those who missed out. A historical study published in 2023 by another Zimbabwe University lecturer, Musiwaro Ndakaripa, notes that "when the IBDC became critical and 'disloyal' to the state's neo-patrimonial matrix, the ZANU-PF government infiltrated and imposed leadership in the organisation."(1)
"The state infiltration was weakening our collective voices," is how Machokoto puts it. In 1995, as two IBDC members attained deputy ministerial positions while IBDC regions across the country were launched by cabinet ministers, the empowerment vehicle split in two. The IBDC would fully disappear from Zimbabwe's radar soon after.
Anti-colonial
In the meantime, another empowerment vehicle had already been set up by early beneficiary, now ZANU-PF aligned empowerment mogul Phillip Chiyangwa, and a few associates. In 1994 Chiyangwa and close ally Peter Pamire launched the Affirmative Action Group (AAG) as a more radical alternative to the IBDC. It used nationalistic anti-white and anti-colonial language, meant to attract new enthusiasm from capital-starved local entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, Machokoto says, the "same selective tendencies" continued. "After the IBDC, we later had the AAG, but from our past experiences, we knew the same problems were going to resurrect. These vultures had seen an easy way to lobby for their selfish gains."
The clientelism-and-loyalty requirement for businesspeople has been openly embraced by Chiyangwa, who has remained a key figure in Zimbabwe's patronage system until today. Chiyangwa extolled the virtues of ruling party-alignment openly in 2000, stating that "I am rich because I belong to ZANU-PF; if you want to be rich like me, you must join the ruling party." He reiterated this more than twenty years later in 2021: "I'm ZANU-PF. I'm a Central Committee member. We support (current) President Emerson Mnangagwa. If you don't support ZANU-PF you will not make money in Zimbabwe. Don't waste your time."
"If you want to be rich, you must join the ruling party"
Among the early IBDC beneficiaries who successfully aligned their business aspirations with the ruling party were Enock Kamushinda, who became a banker; former Boeing and Lonrho associate James Makamba; celebrated female entrepreneur Jane Mutasa, who went into telecoms; and Roger Boka, who pioneered tobacco auctions. Chiyangwa's associate and chair of ZANU's fundraising committee, Peter Pamire, ventured into bus transport and reportedly became a US dollar millionaire by age 28.
Of this first generation, only Strive Masiyiwa and the now late Roger Boka are still credited with having set up tangible businesses in Zimbabwe. However, financial scandals later embroiled a number of these early beneficiaries, including Boka (see infographic).
Success stories
ZAM was unable to access records of the IBDC's and the later AAG's disbursements. The IBDC is gone; the AAG website doesn't work and requests for interviews with several of its past and present leaders were not met with a response. However, according to a 2021 post on a Zimbabwe business website, the empowerment vehicle has recently "nurtured many successful entrepreneurs", mentioning several of these as particular successes.
"The characters are very ambitious"
Most of those mentioned by the very pro-AAG article, however, appear to have never provided tangible goods or services to Zimbabwe. Of the eleven names mentioned in the post, five (Masiyiwa, Boka, Chiyangwa, Makamba, and Pamire) had already come to prominence during the initial years of the IBDC. Of the remaining six, only one (Esau Mupfumi) operates an entity that is not in commodities, finance or consulting, or does not solely consist of shares: a bus company. But most names listed were and are, once again, intimately linked to ZANU-PF, either as members of its politburo, parliament, or government (see infographic).
Two of the six remaining "success stories" were mired in scandals concerning the misuse of funds and fraud - in one case in the AAG itself. US dollar-millionaire Frank Buyanga was once accused of defrauding more than 45 people in Zimbabwe but was later cleared by the Zimbabwe police. After relocating to South Africa in 2011, Buyanga twice ran into problems with the SA Revenue Services: first over SARS's seizure of ZAR 600 million in gold coins in 2020 and for tax evasion. He is currently detained in South Africa on charges of kidnapping (of a relative in a custody battle), where he has recently again been hit with charges of fraud.
Supa Mandiwanzira (a state media mogul, current ZANU-PF MP and former minister) became AAG president in 2010 and was relieved of this post a year later, under accusations against his executive of "embarking on foreign trips that were not beneficial to the AAG and of using the group to defend personal interests that were not in line with the body's objectives." As a Standard newspaper op-ed at the time put it, "(The AAG key figures) are very ambitious and want one thing - money... The plot is still the same. The characters have changed a bit but with some of the old actors occupying positions of power." Phillip Chiyangwa would later publicly state that Mandawanzira's leadership was "cleared of all charges."
"A big deal is not a joke"
Nevertheless, more recent AAG leading members and their relatives and friends still followed the big-spending mould. The fact that, in public discourse, the sources of their sumptuous wealth are often called "mysterious", prompted tenderpreneur Wicknell Chivayo - reportedly a close friend of Zimbabwe's presidential family - to famously state in a 2016 radio interview that his income was certainly "no mystery." "I'm all over the papers signing big deals," he was quoted as saying. "When you see me (on TV) signing a $123 million deal, I mean, that's not a joke. The Zimbabwe Power Company is going to pay me $123 million, that's what it means, literally." In 2023, Chivayo's company Intratek was charged with fraud after it had received US$5.6 million from the same Zimbabwe Power Company for a solar energy project that was never delivered, but a court found that the prosecution had "unreasonably delayed" and Intratrek was acquitted.
Another close associate of the presidential family, tenderpreneur Delish Nguwaya, brought into the AAG in 2021 by Philip Chiyangwa, was fingered in a scandal around COVID-19 supplies through his company Drax International LLC in 2020 and in a dubious waste management deal involving the City of Harare and his company Geo Pomona two years later. No charges have been brought against Nguwaya, who continues to receive media attention as a prominent businessman. However, he has featured, together with other ZANU-PF linked tenderpreneurs, in a Twitter thread by the opposition movement Citizens Coalition for Change that cried out for real steps against the "criminals" in 2023.
Goats and streetlights
Mike Chimombe, former ZANU-PF national youth league indigenisation empowerment secretary and AAG president from 2021, who was once praised on Twitter by his uncle Philip Chiyangwa as a "genuine and self-made entrepreneur and hustler," is one of the few mbingas who have ever landed in jail in Zimbabwe for financial shenanigans. Chimombe had to abandon his AAG position in 2023 when it came to light that he had received a contract of US$ 88 million dollars from the Zimbabwe state to supply goats to farmers, but no goats were ever delivered. Charges levelled in court against Chimombe, who is in prison awaiting the finalisation of his trial, also include an improperly awarded US$9.2 million streetlights tender for the City of Harare.
Meanwhile, both Chivayo and Chimombe are under investigation by the Zimbabwe anti-corruption commission for an allegedly inflated US$ 40 million contract to supply election materials to Zimbabwe's electoral body.
The gold mining entrepreneur was given a Rolls Royce
After Chimombe left the AAG in 2021 and his successor in the executive, Delish Nguwaya, resigned after more infighting and mutual accusations in 2022, the group has been led by gold mining entrepreneur and ZANU-PF MP Pedzai 'Scott' Sakupwanya. Sakupwanya was famously given a Rolls Royce in 2022 by Chivayo, who called him his "best friend." Sakupwanya was also mentioned in a 2023 Al Jazeera investigation as a member of a group of ruling party-connected businessmen who were siphoning off gold worth billions. The documentary named Sakupwanya, owner of the gold trading company Better Brands and a key fundraiser for President Mnangagwa, as a paymaster of a contingent of "runners" throughout the country who buy gold, often at cutthroat prices, from artisanal miners.
Donations and broken systems
The reason for the state's largesse to mbingas is not difficult to guess in a context where the ruling party, ZANU-PF, is practically identical with the state, and the mbingas themselves are ZANU-PF representatives and leading members. In cases where a mbinga holds no government or party position, this is easily remedied through gifts to politicians - Wicknell Chivayo's preferred strategy. Additional to the Rolls he gifted to Sakpuwanya, Chivayo has also donated cars worth over US$14 million to ZANU-PF activists, apologists, and musicians. In April 2024, Chivayo also donated US$ 1 million to Mnangagwa's close friend and church leader, Nehemiah Mutendi.
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Kardashians and rare fish
According to one Zimbabwean social media account, the word "mbinga" indicates "a wealthy person or rare fish." Other internet references include a "large cut of meat", a "person who reached full potential", and a "rich hustler", with a "deep (often shady) source of wealth (presumed to be linked to witchcraft)." The earliest appearance of a mbinga description - without mentioning the word - was in 2017, when the Daily Mirror outed former President Robert Mugabe's sons, Chatunga and Robert Mugabe, who were known to spend lavishly on designer clothes, expensive wine, and cars, as "Zimbabwe's Kardashians." The extent of their wealth was revealed when their sister Bona divorced her husband, exposing an US$8 million home, a fleet of cars, and 21 farms; this despite the one-man-one-farm party mantra, which the land reform, from which they benefitted, was claimed to be premised on.
Director of Zimbabwe's Centre for Natural Resource Governance Farai Maguwu refuses to call the mbingas "entrepreneurs", saying that "true entrepreneurs produce something or offer a certain service to the population. In the first two decades of independence, we had people who became wealthy through tobacco auctions and bus operations. Nobody could question how they made their money. But these so-called mbingas only spend without producing anything. This is a sign of a country whose governance systems are broken and a big cause to be worried."
"They are not arrested because they are fronting for cartels"
Maguwu doesn't believe that Zimbabwe's courts can deal with the problem: saying that, even though some individuals like Mike Chimombe end up in court or in prison, most mbingas continue to get off scot-free. "They are not arrested, let alone investigated, because they are fronting for cartels. In a functioning country, if someone is spending huge sums of money that cannot be traced to some known business enterprise, the police and anti-corruption bodies immediately swing to action. But in our case, you find these suspects enjoying state hospitality at state functions. This means they are mere runners and not the real big fish they pretend to be."
Catch and release
Maguwu and other observers fear that, even in the cases of Chimombe and others who are on trial for corruption, it will be another "catch and release" - a phrase coined by the Zimbabwe anti-corruption commission (ZACC) in 2020 to describe the situation where "arrests involving top ranking ZANU-PF and government officials are not going anywhere ... igniting claims Zimbabwean rulers were interfering with court processes to protect their cronies."
"Organised crime and corruption are responsible for premature deaths"
According to Maguwu, "organised crime and corruption are responsible for the premature deaths of hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans in our collapsed health care system (and other systems). Failure by the government to provide basic services such as clean water result in medieval diseases such as cholera and typhoid. The high unemployment rate causes young people to resort to drugs leading to deaths. Citizens also face severe mental health issues and general breakdown of the family due to economic stress."
Nearly half of Zimbabwe's population, 44 percent, is living in abject poverty, despite it being home to Africa's largest lithium mines.
All mentioned in this article were approached for comment through their companies and their social media accounts. No responses were received.
1.The same author notes that Zimbabwe is not the only African country having implemented "black business empowerment" in this way, stating that "when the African indigenous business class forms business associations, some African governments often penetrate, weaken, or divide them, rendering them less effective."
*Names changed
This article was first published by ZAM Magazine here
