Zunga: a powerful vision for the new Zimbabwe

Today, 17 years later, he is not only one of the most successful Zimbabwean businessmen in the country, but also plays an inspirational role to many of his countrymen his political activism, involvement in economic empowerment initiatives and charity work setting him apart from those who want to sit and do nothing while others shape their future.

Operating from Braamfontein, Zunga runs an accounting firm, C and Z Professional Accountants, which boasts over 500 clients, including some big South African companies. I have a number of other businesses, but C and Z is the flagship of them all, said Zunga during an interview with The Zimbabwean recently.

The company functions mainly as an accounting consultant sourcing funds through various fund-raising initiatives in Europe. We also prepare financial statements and balance sheets, do book-keeping and handle all tax issues for our clients.

A holder of a Masters Degree in Project Management from an Australian institution, Zunga, born in Chimanimani, Manicaland in 1954, is registered as a tax practitioner with both the Professional Practitioners Group and the South African government. But he did not get it all on a silver platter – and that is where the inspiration comes from.

When I left Zimbabwe, I had seen that the country was slowly getting out of step and I could not just wait and see it fall into pieces, so I decided it was time to take my jacket and leave. I considered a number of countries and South Africa, then on the verge of a democratic breakthrough, struck me as the best destination. Upon arrival in South Africa, the business-minded Zunga started a sales training company with a German partner, but differences in policy saw them split, with the Zimbabwean forming C and Z in 1994.

I had owned C and Z Accounting in Zimbabwe, operating from Mutare, so I decided to re-open it here. But there were a lot of challenges then because of all the election fever that had gripped this country at the time. I struggled to set up the business because I had no support system and was just a mere immigrant in a country that was about to break into a new era of democracy. There was a lot of political violence everywhere and here I was trying to start a business. It took me four months to get a landline and language barriers also pulled me backwards.

Determination and experience saw Zunga through and his company is now well-established. He did not stop there and is heavily involved in events back home. Pained when President Robert Mugabe began expropriating white-owned farms in the name of land reform in 2000, Zunga wrote his first book, Farm Invasions in Zimbabwe: Is Zimbabwe a Democracy?, which shot down Mugabes claims that he was correcting racial imbalances brought about by colonialism, the author arguing that farm seizures were a way by Mugabe of trying to hit back at the electorate that had voted his will away in the 2000 constitutional referendum.

Mugabe had realised that 10 per cent of the countrys population then was in the farming areas, working as farm workers, while 40 per cent was in the urban centres and if he had failed to get 100 per cent of the rural vote, which constituted the other 50 per cent, he would lose the election to the MDC, hence his decision to destroy the farm constituency, argued Zunga in the book, published in 2003.

In the same book, Zunga predicted the infamous Operation Murambatsvina, writing that, since most of the alien farm workers from Malawi and Zambia, who had no rural areas to go to when their farm compounds were destroyed, most would go to the urban centres and rent backyard shacks or erect slums and Mugabe would follow them there. This happened two years later.

In 2005, Zunga wrote another book, Economic growth strategies and a booklet, Project House, a year later. He has also been active in social, political and economic activism, occupying key positions in a number of Zimbabwean-aligned organisations in South Africa, some of which he also funds. In 1994, he was voted to chair the non-governmental organisation Concerned Zimbabweans Abroad, which led demonstrations over the unfolding situation back home a few years later.

But, is Zunga willing to go back to Zimbabwe once democracy is restored? I definitely want to go back there and lead developmental issues. That is my country and I really want to go back, so do most Zimbabwean professionals and experts that I have spoken to. That is why we are preparing other people to go back because Zimbabweans love their country.