Previously, we talked about one type of the organised eating clubs in Zimbabwe, the legacy cartel.
This one essentially comprises the ravenous eaters who have managed to transition from one political regime to the next, despite the seeming odds, taking advantage of the new political incumbency. Like, reference was made to Kuda Tagwirei of the Sakunda fame, and Wicknell Chivayo, whose claim to fame has been chameleonic.
We used to associate him (Chivayo) with the briefcase outfit called Intratek, which he used to milk us of close to a billion dollars in useful money before the second thieving republic took over amid guns and tanks in late 2017.
Intratek then virtually fizzled out, save on those occasions when it was mentioned in court for all manner of wrongdoing. Chivayo has been making millions and millions and millions of dollars in good money without bothering to put a name to any of his shenanigans, fixing government tenders under very, very hazy circumstances.
But we would have put Wicknell aside in this winding mumbo-jumbo on Zimbabwe’s intricate Mafioso. When you think you have yawned enough on this pretty energetic lad, something even weirder than what you have already seen crops up.
About a week ago, President Emmerson Mnangagwa made two dramatic announcements. Not through official government communication. Not through a law, presidential decree or legal instrument. Tellingly through X, formerly Twitter. He announced that he had approved Starlink operations in Zimbabwe, just falling short of saying “finally”.
That’s not what he really meant to tell us. His ultimate message lay in his second announcement. That he had — virtually by himself, probably on a hangover at his Precabe Farm in Kwekwe — made Wicknell Chivayo the sole trader of Starlink products and services in Zimbabwe.
Potraz, as the licensing authority, didn’t have a single clue of what he was talking about. Its technical committee and board were yet to meet to peruse and decide on additional information that they had requested Starlink to provide.
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I will put it on record that, up to now, the Potraz committee, let alone the board, is still deliberating on the Starlink application. Never mention the fact the ICT minister was left out of the conversation, when it’s her or him who is normally supposed to make such announcements, if not Potraz itself or some director in the ministry.
So, by making the strange announcement using an equally strange method of communication, Mnangagwa seems to have set out to pronounce the agenda. Money must be made, so Starlink must be licensed, and Potraz must not even start thinking about it.
Now, that brings back the age-old question. Which thing be this about President Mnangagwa and Chivayo being so close now? As you will recall, the young man was, by default or design, an enemy of the current president when the late Robert Mugabe was still in power. Chivayo sided with the G40 faction that was fighting tooth and claw to take over from Mugabe while Mnangagwa belonged to a rival camp that finally succeeded in doing so.
In fact, when Mnangagwa took over, the judiciary seemed to have rediscovered the energy to prosecute Chivayo for defrauding the government of mega millions through Intratek, which claimed money for jobs it never did.
Mysteriously, that energy fast dissipated and, next thing, Wicknell was now busy dolling out cars to influencers pushing the Zanu PF cause. Things happened in fast progression, with the latest being Mnangagwa’s fake licensing of Starlink.
But why would a whole president stick his neck out for such a dishonourable thing? As a first answer, there is no doubt that, post-Mugabe, Chivayo is enjoying political patronage to the max. At the centre of that patronage is Mnangagwa.
Just as an aside at this juncture, have you noticed how the president has this monumental affinity for low-life boys who then go on to become absurdly rich? His closeness to Owen Mudha Ncube is well document. They come a long way from that time when the president, then a senior minister, took the poor young Mudha under his roof and took care of him as his mother was of little means, going further to make him State Security minister when he took over from Mugabe.
Then there is Scott Sakupwanya, who has been seen with the president on several occasions and has managed to make super millions over a short time doing artisanal mining. After that, you have Mike Chimombe and Delish Nguwaya.
These boys are infamous for making money in ways that don’t make sense to most of us. But there is more. You must also know by now that all of them, with the exception of Chimombe, are school dropouts. They started life in the streets and trenches, all of them meddling in dirty and even illegal money-making. Delish was a tout. Wicknell was a “change money”. Scott, well, was a pikinini before moving into artisanal mining, whose line with illegal mining is so thin even an infra-red microscope may not be able to detect it.
Their English seems to have improved somewhat over time, but there was a time when all of them couldn’t tell the difference between “there” “and their”, or even “his” and “hers”.
Godfather. That’s the power word here. That motor-mouth called Uebert Angel and other chaps jaw-jawing in the Gold Mafia series described President Mnangagwa as the king. They meant, of course, the king of the gold mafia. They said he was at the centre of things. That may have been defamatory, but coming from crooks who have enjoyed their own time in the sun with the president at varying times, who cares?
Mnangagwa, in the same vein, is undeniably Wicknell’s godfather. Without him, this documented conman would be nothing. You noticed that, in recent days, Wicknell was able to meet with the all-powerful president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, and Tanzanian president, Samia Suluhu Hassan.
Now, you won’t be able to do that if you are not strongly connected. Wicknell is strongly connected to President Mnangagwa. That, among other indicators, is the reason why he is likely to land — in fact, has landed — the Starlink deal without breaking a sweat.
In this regard, it becomes amply logical to conclude that Wicknell is now able to meet other African presidents because of the Mnangagwa patronage. You all saw how the ex-convict was able to hobnob with Kenyan president, William Ruto, at the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair, again courtesy of Mnangagwa.
There is no president who is going to allow his name and image to be soiled by being associated so closely with a low-life like Wicknell unless there is something for him. Again, it becomes temptingly logical to conclude that there must be something for the president in this Mnangagwa-Chivayo scheme of things.
Problem is, it’s always designed to be difficult to get the real facts, unless you are sufficiently woven into this legacy cartel. But then, those who know are so busy eating they don’t want to be disturbed by some unnecessary and pretty dangerous talk.
That leaves one option. To draw causal inferences from the relationship. I have heard some obviously reckless people speculating that Chivayo is Mnangagwa’s "runner”. What this means is that Chivayo is nothing but a proxy. Where you say Chivayo has stolen a tender, what it would then mean, going by the thinking of these careless armchair theorists, is that the tender actually belongs to the president.
I call this speculative or hypothetical logic. But that doesn’t mean the logic is completely useless.
And if there is usefulness in this kind of logic, you can only drool at how the gods are smiling on the president. Take the Starlink deal. Do you know how much Wicknell would make in lieu of his suspected godfather? Since he would be the sole agent for Starlink, it means each and every public institution or entity would be forced to buy from “him”, despite the fact he doesn’t know a single thing about telecommunications outside the dirty money involved.
Do you know how many schools, clinics, hospitals, universities and colleges, state-owned enterprises, government departments, quasi-government units and downstream organisations there are in Zimbabwe? Thousands!
The math is simple. If all these will be buying from Chivayo’s imaginary company called IMC, that dude will be a billionaire in no time. But not quite, if you are sympathetic to the conspiracy theory that Wicknell is a runner. The godfather would be the billionaire, and Wicknell will be told to donate more cars to artists, Zanu PF bum shakers, et cetera.
*Tawanda Majoni writes in his personal capacity and can be contacted on [email protected]
