If your survival depends on proximity to power or public tenders, you’re not a businessman – you’re a leech

📅 Published: August 16, 2025

📰 Source: thezimbabwean

Curated by AllZimNews.com

They thrive not by innovating, investing, or building enterprises that serve people, but by clinging tightly to whoever occupies State House.

This reality explains the growing desperation among Zimbabwe’s so-called tenderpreneurs to defend President Emmerson Mnangagwa at all costs, including backing calls for him to extend his rule beyond the constitutional two-term limit.

Even more telling are the reports — albeit conflicting — that Kudakwashe Tagwirei, perhaps the most infamous of these “Zvigananda,” has been co-opted into the ZANU-PF Central Committee, the party’s highest decision-making body in between congresses.

Whether confirmed or denied, the mere suggestion reveals a dangerous blurring of lines between politics and business, and the frantic maneuvering of tenderpreneurs to secure their survival in a post-Mnangagwa Zimbabwe.

But why this panic?

After all, Mnangagwa’s exit in 2028, as per constitutional term limits, is unlikely to usher in an opposition government.

Zimbabwe’s opposition is effectively dead, fragmented, and incapable of mounting a serious challenge.

The far more probable outcome is another ZANU-PF presidency, with the natural successor being Vice President and former Zimbabwe Defence Forces Commander, Constantino Chiwenga.

This is the man who led the November 2017 coup that toppled Robert Mugabe and ushered Mnangagwa into power.

Logic dictates that ZANU-PF will retain power, and with it, the system that has sustained these tenderpreneurs.

So why should they be afraid?

The answer lies in who Chiwenga is and what he represents to this clique of politically connected businessmen.