Harare Television Network

03/02/2026

Zimbabwe spy scandal deepens as chief secretary accused of enabling looting through protected operative
By Takabatana Investigations
HARARE: Zimbabwe’s deepening intelligence corruption scandal has shifted beyond a single rogue operative, with multiple sources alleging that the country’s most powerful civil servant, Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet Dr Martin Rushwaya, is the central enabler of a system that has shielded a senior spy from arrest while millions of dollars in public funds were looted.
At the centre of the scandal is Linos Mapfumo, a senior Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) operative accused of playing a key role in the diversion of at least US$4.5 million from a US$6.8 million National Social Security Authority (NSSA) loan intended to fund a CIO-linked construction project in Harare.
Investigators and intelligence sources say Mapfumo’s continued protection is not accidental but administratively and strategically engineered, using his family ties to Rushwaya.
“Rushwaya is the enabler,” said one senior intelligence source. “Mapfumo is simply the instrument because muzukuru waRushwaya and he is used to execute and front deals that would otherwise attract scrutiny.”
Mapfumo’s influence inside the intelligence apparatus predates the current scandal. He previously served as intelligence attaché to Isaac Moyo during Moyo’s tenure as Zimbabwe’s ambassador, a posting that placed Mapfumo at the intersection of diplomacy, intelligence and offshore financial networks.
Moyo later became CIO Director-General and approved the now-tainted NSSA-funded building project in late 2024, shortly before his removal and subsequent appointment as Zimbabwe’s ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, a move widely criticised by governance watchdogs as a mechanism to shield compromised officials.
Sources say Rushwaya played a decisive role in insulating Moyo from prosecution, a pattern now repeating itself with Mapfumo.
According to intelligence officials familiar with internal deployments, Mapfumo has now been formally attached to Zimbabwe’s embassy in Paris, which is a deliberate attempt to place him beyond the immediate reach of Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC) and police investigators.
“The Paris posting is a form of protection because it removes him physically while the paper trail cools,”said a source.
The move has triggered unusual anger and dissent within the CIO, according to multiple serving officers, who describe growing frustration over what they see as selective discipline and institutional capture.
“The whole organisation is angry,” said one CIO officer. “People are punished for far less, but when it involves Rushwaya’s people, there are no consequences.”
Current CIO Director-General Dr Fulton Mangwanya initially attempted to halt the project shortly after taking office, according to internal communications and two officials with direct knowledge of the discussions.
But within weeks, Mangwanya reversed his position.
Sources say he later told senior officers that he was under “immense pressure” from the Office of the President and Cabinet.
“Mangwanya joined them,” said one source bluntly. “Not because he started it, but because the pressure was too heavy and he just saw it better to join the looting frenzy.”
ZACC documents show that NSSA disbursed US$4.5 million to Chigama Architectural Services and Project Management, the firm managing the project on behalf of Terrestrial Holdings, the CIO’s investment arm.
Instead of paying contractors, the funds were diverted into Alpha Asset Management and Access Forex, where investigators allege they were traded and laundered.
Multiple sources allege that the architect and project structure were imposed through Rushwaya’s influence, effectively allowing control of the funds from inception to diversion.
The Mapfumo case mirrors earlier scandals involving politically connected figures, including the 2020 arrest of Henrietta Rushwaya for attempted gold smuggling, a case that exposed the use of intelligence operatives to facilitate illicit activities through state infrastructure.
Meanwhile, whistleblowers inside the CIO have historically faced punishment whenever they reported procurement corruption. In 2020, several officers who blew the whistle on corruption were demoted and subjected to disciplinary hearings after their High Court appeal failed.
ZACC has conducted raids linked to the case between November 2025 and January 2026, and officials say investigations are ongoing.
But analysts say the real test is not whether Mapfumo is questioned, but whether the system that protects him is confronted.
“This is not just corruption,” said an analyst in Harare. “It is state capture operating through family, intelligence and executive power, with Rushwaya as the gateway.”
As pressure mounts, the scandal raises a question Zimbabweans have asked before, whether anti-corruption institutions can act independently in a system where power does not sit in offices, but in relationships.
https://takabatana.com/2026/02/03/zimbabwe-spy-scandal-deepens-as-chief-secretary-enables-looting-through-protected-operative/

04/01/2026

When Silence Speaks Louder Than Power: Chiwenga, Ethics, and the Crisis of Authority in Zimbabwe:

(A Covenant in Blood vs. A Politics of Plunder)

By Reason Wafawarova

Zimbabwe is not short of speeches. It is drowning in them. What it lacks is meaning.

So, when Vice President Constantino Chiwenga spoke at the burial of Brigadier-General Mathias Tizirai Ngarava, what struck the nation was not the length of the address, nor the ceremony of the moment — but the weight of what was said, and more importantly, what was implied.

Burials are supposed to close chapters. This one opened a ledger.

At a time when political discourse has been reduced to slogans, donations, convoys, and constitutional vandalism, Chiwenga chose a different register: memory, obligation, restraint, and ethics. He did not name names. He did not posture. He did not perform. Yet his words landed squarely in the centre of Zimbabwe’s unresolved crisis of authority.

He reminded the nation that the liberation struggle was not an act of ambition, but of necessity — a response to land dispossession, exclusion, and systematic denial of dignity. He spoke of a generation that did not go to war to prosper, but to restore humanity to the dispossessed. And then came the line that has refused to leave public consciousness:

“We signed a covenant in blood.”

That phrase alone separates two moral universes now co-existing uncomfortably within the Zimbabwean state.

The Covenant — and the Betrayal:

A covenant in blood is not a metaphor of convenience. It is a moral contract sealed by death, discipline, and self-denial. In invoking it, Chiwenga was not rehearsing nostalgia. He was measuring the present against a standard.

And the measurement was damning.

Because if the liberation struggle was fought so that every Zimbabwean would be born in dignity and economically empowered, as he reminded mourners, then the Zimbabwe of today stands accused. Not by opposition parties. Not by civil society. But by its own founding promise.

Chiwenga was explicit where it mattered most: the struggle was not waged so that a few could prosper while many remain in abject poverty. That sentence, delivered at a military burial, carried more political clarity than a thousand party resolutions.

In a system now defined by oligarchs, tenderpreneurs, and what Chiwenga himself has previously called zvigananda — vampire wealth extractors — the covenant has been replaced by cartel logic. Loyalty is purchased. Silence is rewarded. Ethics are treated as inconveniences.

This is the crisis at the heart of Zimbabwean authority today: power without moral legitimacy.

Ethical Leadership as Political Indictment:

What made the speech politically disruptive was not its tone, but its framework.

Chiwenga spoke of ethical leadership, clean governance, unity of purpose, and inclusive economic transformation as conditions for national growth — not as aspirations, but as requirements. He warned, without spectacle, that the vision of an upper-middle-income society collapses the moment selfish enrichment practices are tolerated.

This was not technocratic language. It was moral separation.

In a political environment where leadership is increasingly conflated with distribution of vehicles, cash, and access, Chiwenga’s insistence that development must be judged by livelihoods, dignity, and industrial transformation implicitly repudiated the dominant model of transactional rule.

And that is why the speech mattered.

It echoed, deliberately or not, the quiet contrast already visible to the public: one camp shouting, spending, bribing, threatening, and fracturing the state — another standing still, letting the system reveal itself.

Why Silence Now Carries Authority:

As explored in The Man Who Wins by Watching Others Fight, Chiwenga’s silence has become politically legible. Not because it is passive, but because it is disciplined.

The burial speech explains that discipline.

A man who frames politics as covenant does not auction himself daily. A man who sees the state as a moral inheritance does not outsource authority to financiers. A man who understands sacrifice does not confuse noise with leadership.

While others rush to fill space — to chant, to donate, to posture — Chiwenga has allowed collapse to speak for itself. The money club implodes. The Constitution is treated as optional. Party structures fracture. Donors turn into competitors. Authority leaks.

He does not interrupt because interruption would collapse the contrast.

The Military Memory That Will Not Die:

There is another audience to whom the speech spoke directly, even without naming them: the military constituency that carried the weight of 2017 — alongside the masses who marched in hope.

That constituency has watched, in disbelief, as reform promises were replaced by feudal extraction; as public service became private accumulation; as senior officers died under unresolved circumstances; as the Vice President himself survived a prolonged and unexplained illness abroad; as dossiers were ignored, and questions deflected.

Chiwenga’s reference to comrades who returned transformed — bound forever by the mission to safeguard the nation they liberated was not ceremonial. It was reminder and warning.

The military did not intervene to replace one elite with another. It intervened to prevent national humiliation. That mission remains unresolved.

Burial as Mirror, Not Closure:

Perhaps the most unsettling moment of the speech was its final challenge:

What legacy are we creating? One of sacrifice and national purpose — or one of plunder?

That question hangs over Zimbabwe like an unresolved inquest.

Because the true measure of respect for fallen commanders, as Chiwenga stated plainly, will not be found in ceremonies — but in the quality of the Zimbabwe left behind.

That is the political meaning of the burial.

Not mourning, but accounting. Not ritual, but reckoning.

The Crisis of Authority:

Zimbabwe’s problem is no longer opposition versus ruling party. It is ethics versus extraction. Covenant versus cartel. Memory versus amnesia.

Authority has fractured because it no longer rests on shared purpose, but on purchased compliance. And no amount of slogans, rallies, or constitutional gymnastics can repair that fracture.

In such moments, leadership does not shout. It endures.

Silence, when anchored in restraint, memory, and moral clarity, becomes political capital.

That is why Chiwenga’s words mattered. That is why his restraint unsettles. And that is why the crisis of authority cannot be resolved by noise.

Because a covenant in blood does not expire.

It waits.

02/09/2025

TAGWIREI’S CENTRAL COMMITTEE BID HITS A WALL, MACHACHA DISMANTLES VARAKASHI CLAIMS

The Zvigananda faction in ZANU-PF has been left scrambling after its social media mouthpieces loudly declared billionaire Kudakwashe Tagwirei a Central Committee member, a claim now exposed as false.

Party Commissar Munyaradzi Machacha confirmed over the weekend that Tagwirei’s entry is not a done deal, directly contradicting legal secretary Patrick Chinamasa, who had boasted online that the businessman’s co-option was sealed.

The setback follows last month’s intervention by Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga, who blocked a push by Harare provincial chair Godwills Masimirembwa to fast-track Tagwirei’s appointment, citing breaches of party procedure.

ZANU-PF spokesperson Christopher Mutsvangwa went further, accusing Tagwirei of trying to buy his way into power and insisting the process must start afresh.

Chinamasa had dismissed objections as “jealousy” in a late-night social media post, only to delete it hours later before reposting it at dawn. But Machacha’s statement now makes clear: only the Central Committee can decide, not Twitter hype or factional grandstanding.

ZANU-PF’s director of information, Farai Marapira, added that Tagwirei and other would-be appointees were asked to leave a recent meeting because their nominations had not yet been ratified. He stressed the decision was procedural, not personal.

For Tagwirei, the message is blunt, deep pockets and Varakashi propaganda are no guarantee of deep power.

https://www.newsday.co.zw/local-news/article/200045609/tagwirei-not-cc-member-zanu-pf

02/09/2025

Mnangagwa’s “Title Deeds” Or a Billion-Dollar Land Grab?

What’s being sold as empowerment could be the biggest land heist since colonial rule.

President Mnangagwa’s title deeds scheme, fronted by tycoon Kudakwashe Tagwirei, is accused of bypassing the constitution, sidelining the Zimbabwe Land Commission, and forcing farmers into crippling debt.

War veterans, the very people who fought to reclaim this land, are being billed US$300 per hectare for surveysand over US$500 per hectare for the deeds themselves. Those who can’t pay are sent to Tagwirei’s CBZ Bank, where the bank keeps the title.

"They sacrificed their lives for this land. Now they are told to pay for it, that lack of shame is appalling.”
Mbizvo Jealousy Mawarire (The Standard, 31 August 2025)

Critics say the scheme mirrors the same colonial landlordism Zimbabwe’s liberation war sought to end, stripping land from the many and concentrating it in the hands of a connected few.

War veterans have taken the fight to court, but the case has been stalled for months.

Is this empowerment… or the grand return of colonial-style land theft?

Published in The Standard, 31 August 2025

Mnangagwa’s title deeds a ruse, says Mawarire

31/08/2025

Zimbabwe’s Mnangagwa leaves wife behind, takes alleged lover to Vatican

VATICAN CITY, Aug 2025.
Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa left First Lady Auxillia Mnangagwa at home and instead took Attorney‑General Virginia Mabiza, reported to be his long‑standing sexual partner, on his official visit to meet Pope Francis, a Takabatana investigation has found.

The move defied established Vatican protocol, where visiting heads of state normally bring their spouses. In contrast, Zimbabwe’s Vice President Constantino Chiwenga represented the country at the recent funeral of Pope Francis, attending with his wife, underscoring the diplomatic norm that Mnangagwa broke

Mabiza, Zimbabwe’s top legal officer, appeared prominently in official photographs and high-level engagements during the trip. Government insiders said that her involvement in a romantic relationship with the President is widely known and longstanding.

Mnangagwa’s decision to leave his wife behind and bring Mabiza has sparked speculation of a breach within the presidential household and intensified scrutiny of his personal conduct. Analysts warn the incident may further imperil his domestic and international standing.

“For a leader already under scrutiny for governance and moral integrity, to replace his wife with his mistress on a papal visit is both audacious and potentially damaging,” said one Harare-based political commentator.

The Vatican has not issued a comment on the apparent deviation from diplomatic convention.

30/08/2025

HARARE, Aug 30 | 2pm CAT (Takabatana)
Zimbabwe’s Local Government Ministry's recently issued directive tightening central control over council recruitment, is part of President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s plan to entrench his corrupt political network, 'Zvigananda', across all tiers of authority.

The circular, signed by Local Government Secretary John Bhasera, requires local authorities to seek ministerial approval for job adverts, submit candidate lists for joint vetting, and allow ministry officials to participate in all interview processes. Councils can only make final appointments with central government sign-off.

Opponents argue the directive strips away the limited autonomy guaranteed to councils under the 2013 Constitution, particularly Chapter 14, which mandates devolution and empowers local authorities to run their affairs without interference.
Most councils are holding unapproved master plans, which are blueprints determining land use, development projects and investment priorities, and the new controls give Harare decisive leverage over which projects proceed, who implements them, and which land is allocated.

The arrangement benefits Mnangagwa’s Zvigananda faction, a coalition of politically connected elites accused of using state institutions for personal enrichment , by embedding loyalists in strategic posts.
With allies in local authorities, central ministries, and the president’s office, the network can influence land allocation, direct lucrative tenders, and extend its reach over public resources nationwide.

30/08/2025

Zimbabwe is grappling with a staggering youth unemployment crisis, with 1.4 million young people neither in work, education nor training, according to the United Nations. The figures, described as “disturbing” by UN resident coordinator Edward Kallon, reflect the deepening economic collapse under President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s administration.

Analysts blame entrenched corruption and cartelism, notably the Zvigananda network of politically connected elites , for draining state resources, crippling industries and shutting down opportunities for ordinary citizens.

The crisis has fueled drug abuse and social instability, leaving a generation in limbo. President Mnangagwa, who promised 2.2 million jobs in 2018, has instead presided over worsening economic decline.

Many Zimbabweans now pin their hopes on Vice President Constantino Chiwenga, who has repeatedly vowed to dismantle corruption networks and restore accountability when he assumes power.

23/07/2025

Vice President Chiwenga has taken a bold stand against this rot. And now, the corrupt are striking back, using every trick to discredit him, because they know their day of reckoning is coming.
Watch the full video now on Harare Television Network.

08/06/2024

Murume uyu anonzi Mr Muchembere teacher at Nyamatikiti High School in Rushinga Mt Darwin auraya mkadzi wake nhasi 08/06/2024 around 03:00 and after amuuraya abva atumira msg pagroup rewhatsapp rinonzi RUSHINGA POLITICS AND DEVELOPMENT achiti ndauraya mkadzi. So murume uyu abva atiza up to now 10:25 haasati azivikana kuti aripi but as I'm saying now he is sending mamsg group iroro achitaura kuti mkadzi ndamuuraya nekuti anga achidanana neshamwari yangu muzvinabhizimusi wemuRushinga anonzi Roddy Mujati.

Anenge amuonawo murume uyu ngaaizivise mapurisa ari penyu.

28/05/2024

Ndiani wavaziva apa?