Tendai Ruben Mbofana
The tragic trajectory of the post-liberation state in Zimbabwe and across significant swaths of the African continent is not merely a story of failed policy or unfortunate economic headwinds.
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It is a profound, systemic, and psychological collapse of the foundational promise of independence.
We find ourselves staring into a void where a specific class of political elites—those who took over the reins at independence and have remained entrenched ever since—have mutated into the very monsters they once sought to slay.
It is critical, however, to distinguish this parasitic class from the genuine freedom fighters who did the actual fighting in the trenches.
While the foot soldiers of the revolution saw their comrades killed and today continue to languish in the same unbelievable poverty as the rest of the citizenry, a narrow group of liberation leaders managed to hijack the people’s struggle.
This transformation from the “selfless liberator” to the “parasitic looter” is a pathology of power that defies standard logic but follows a cold, calculated internal consistency.
To understand how an individual can reach a point of owning numerous mansions and luxury fleets while the children of his compatriots succumb to preventable diseases, we must look into the dark heart of a struggle that was stolen from its own heroes.
At the core of this mutation is the dangerous concept of the Right of Conquest.
For the liberation elite, the act of freeing the nation was never viewed as a transition toward democratic stewardship but as a permanent transfer of ownership.
In their internal narrative, the country is not a republic of equal citizens but a “war trophy” won through blood and fire.
This creates a psychological decoupling from the common good.
When a leader extracts millions from the national treasury to fund a lifestyle of vulgar opulence for themselves and a revolving door of lovers, they do not feel the sting of shame.
In their distorted reality, they are simply collecting a “liberation dividend” that the nation can never fully repay.
The mansions in Harare’s upmarket suburbs and the offshore accounts in secrecy jurisdictions are viewed as the just spoils of a war they believe they are still fighting.
The citizen is no longer a stakeholder to be served; the citizen is a subject whose resources are to be harvested.
This individual pathology is reinforced by the functional requirements of staying in power within a neopatrimonial shadow state.
This was a process of consolidation that often began during the struggle itself, where genuine leaders were systematically eliminated through assassination and internal purges to ensure that only the most ruthless would ascend at independence.
Having secured the seat of power, the new elite did not dismantle the extractive machinery of the colonial state; they simply moved into the driver’s seat.
To maintain a grip on power in a climate of dwindling legitimacy, the leader must feed a vast patronage pyramid.
This is the “fuel” of the regime.
The military top brass, the judicial gatekeepers, and the administrative elites must be made complicit in the looting.
Corruption, therefore, becomes the essential glue of the system.
By allowing subordinates to plunder parastatals and demand ten percent kickbacks on every national contract, the leader ensures a “mutually assured destruction” pact.
If the leader falls, the entire network of looters falls with him.
Furthermore, we must confront the “Bush Logic” that has been fatally transposed onto civil governance.
The traits required to lead a successful guerrilla insurgency—extreme secrecy, absolute command-and-control, paranoia, and the reflexive use of violence—are the antithesis of the transparency and accountability required for a functional democracy.
These leaders never truly “demobilized” their minds.
When faced with a strike by nurses, a protest by students, or an investigative report by a journalist, they do not see a democratic disagreement.
They see an “enemy” to be crushed.
The laws of the land are subsequently twisted into weapons of “lawfare,” where the judiciary is hollowed out to protect the looter while persecuting the dissenter.
The state becomes a fortress, and the liberation narrative is weaponized as a moral shield.
Any critique of their vulgar accumulation of wealth is dismissed as a coordinated attack by external “dark forces,” allowing the elite to bypass accountability with a sense of righteous indignation.
The sheer magnitude of the wealth being siphoned—the “filthy rich” status of career civil servants who have never run a productive business—points to a phase of primitive accumulation.
Having entered the halls of power with nothing but their revolutionary credentials, the elite realized that political power is fleeting unless it is converted into economic capital.
They began to strip the state like a salvaged vehicle in a junkyard.
National resources, from minerals to land, are treated as private equity.
The “endless lovers” and the multiple expensive cars are more than just signs of personal moral decay; they are signals of absolute dominance.
In a culture of “Big Man” politics, vulgar consumption is the ultimate language of power.
It is a way of saying that the law does not apply to them, and that they have ascended to a plane of existence where the suffering of the masses—including the abandoned former combatants—is merely background noise.
This intoxication is deepened by what neurologists call Hubris Syndrome.
Years of unchecked authority and the constant whispering of sycophants literally rewire the brain’s empathy circuits.
The leader becomes isolated from the reality of the charcoal-burning grandmother or the graduate selling airtime on the street corner.
They begin to believe in their own messianic status, convinced that their personal survival is synonymous with the survival of the nation.
At this stage, they are prepared to see the country burn if it means they can keep the keys to the kingdom.
They will maim, imprison, and kill not because they are inherently “monsters,” but because the cost of losing power—the loss of impunity and the loss of the trough—is a fate they consider worse than death.
They are trapped in a “death match” of their own making.
How did we get to this point?
We got here because we allowed the halo of the “liberator” to blind us to the instincts of the “predator.”
We allowed a generation of leaders to equate their historical presence in the struggle with a permanent license to loot, while the true heroes of that struggle were left to rot in the sun.
The tragedy of Zimbabwe and many of its neighbors is that the very people who hijacked the path to freedom have used the chains of the past to tether the future to their personal greed.
The shame is absent because the conscience has been cauterized by decades of absolute power.
The only way forward is to dismantle the myth of the “infallible liberator” and replace it with the cold, hard reality of the “accountable servant.”
Until the cost of looting exceeds the benefits of power, the parasitic cycle will continue, and the dream of independence will remain a nightmare of extraction.
- Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. To directly receive his articles please join his WhatsApp Channel on: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaqprWCIyPtRnKpkHe08