JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – Mutumwa Mawere, the businessman who fought for years to reclaim ownership of Shabani Mashaba Mines (SMM) after it was seized by the Zimbabwean government, has died at the age of 66. Mawere passed away at a hospital in Johannesburg, where he had lived in exile for nearly two decades. His brother, Vincent Mawere, said the entrepreneur never fully recovered from a stroke he suffered in 2024.
“He was the most consequential businessman of our generation – energetic, sharp, intelligent and articulate,” former cabinet minister Saviour Kasukuwere wrote on X. Mawere’s protracted dispute with the Zimbabwean state dates back to 2004, when the government stripped him of his controlling stake in the asbestos miner using the Reconstruction of State Indebted and Insolvent Companies Act. He had bought the company in 1998.
The law empowered the justice minister to take over companies deemed insolvent or indebted to the state without judicial oversight, a move that critics at the time described as draconian and unconstitutional. Mawere, who held South African citizenship, spent years challenging the takeover in Zimbabwean, South African and British courts, but was ultimately unsuccessful. Until his death, he continued to dispute the government’s claim that SMM – which exported asbestos around the world – was insolvent or indebted to the state at the time of its seizure.
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He argued that the debts cited by authorities – used to justify invoking the Reconstruction Act – were not owed directly to the government but to parastatals and commercial entities, including the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) under its Productive Sector Facility (PSF), as well as the National Social Security Authority (NSSA) and power utility ZESA. Mawere maintained that these institutions operated independently of the state and that their loans were commercial in nature, raising questions about whether SMM’s obligations could legitimately be classified as state debt. The government quickly ran SMM into the ground leading to the loss of 5,000 jobs.
After relocating permanently to South Africa, Mawere became a vocal public intellectual, writing newspaper columns and appearing on television and radio programmes to discuss the SMM case, entrepreneurship and African economic empowerment. “Zimbabwe has lost one of its boldest minds. Mutumwa Mawere believed deeply in African ownership, enterprise, and dignity,” Ahmed Bashir wrote on X. An economist by training, Mawere worked for the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation, before returning home to set up the building blocks of his empire.
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