Tendai Ruben Mbofana
Today President Emmerson Mnangagwa made a statement that startled the nation.
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While addressing the ZANU-PF Politburo, he rebuked those who failed to attend a recent fundraising ball for the upcoming party congress.
He said: “Some of you came and some of you didn’t come, but you’re members of the Politburo…”
This was widely believed to have been a direct rebuke at several high-ranking officials, such as Vice President Constantino Chiwenga, who were conspicuous by their absence at the event.
That public scolding missed a crucial moral point.
It assumed that presence at a high-table function is simply a matter of party discipline.
It ignored what that high table now represents to the conscience of those expected to sit below it.
A nation watches closely when its highest leadership chooses its companions.
It sees where authority truly resides by looking at who sits closest to the head of state.
When senior party officials look toward the top table, they no longer see the historical guardians of the revolution.
They see questionable tenderpreneurs and flamboyant brokers of state patronage.
Men like Kudakwashe Tagwirei and Scott Sakupwanya have become the main figures around executive power.
Even Joachim, the younger brother of the late Wicknell Chivayo, occupies a seat of prominence while facing charges in South Africa for a R15 million gold smuggling racket.
When such figures frame the presidency, the message sent to long-serving party members is stark and humiliating.
This displacement of constitutional structures by moneyed interests is not a subtle shift.
It has become the public face of governance.
Wicknell Chivayo was routinely seen accompanying the President in meetings with visiting foreign heads of state, including President William Ruto of Kenya.
On numerous airport tarmacs, he was positioned at the front of the receiving line.
He stood ahead of Vice Presidents and cabinet ministers to greet the head of state upon arrival.
When private dealmakers supersede elected and appointed leaders in protocol, a fundamental boundary is broken.
The state apparatus is reduced to a backdrop for personal patronage.
The term Zvigananda speaks to this exact phenomenon.
It describes an emergent class that trades off political access without holding formal responsibility to the public.
They possess immense wealth derived from state concessions, public tenders, and gold dealings.
Yet they carry no moral commitment to the welfare of the people.
To ask high-ranking officials to attend an event organized around this dynamic is to ask them to participate in their own degradation.
It forces men and women who spent decades in public service to accept a secondary status.
They are expected to clap politely while tenderpreneurs display their opulence.
Loyalty to a movement should never require silent submission to the usurpation of state dignity.
When political authority surrenders its prestige to shadowy wealth, the core moral purpose of leadership collapses.
The empty chairs at the fundraising dinner were not merely an exercise in defiance.
They were a quiet reflection of an uncomfortable truth.
A political party that elevates financial gatekeepers above its own institutional structures loses its moral anchor.
It tells its members that history, service, and principle count for nothing against the influence of quick riches.
Power must eventually account for the company it keeps.
When a presidency surrounds itself with figures defined by public scandal and dubious tenders, it alienates those who value institutional integrity.
The central question facing the presidency is not why officials chose to stay away.
The real question is why the top table was surrendered to Zvigananda in the first place.
Until that dignity is restored to public life, no amount of public scolding will fill those vacant seats.
- Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to contact him on +263715667700 or mbofana.tendairuben73@gmail.com