🧵 Josiah Tongogara’s Death — The Night Mugabe Won Zimbabwe

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26 Dec 1979.
Liberation war ending.
Josiah Tongogara — ZANLA commander, feared soldier, possible future leader — heads to brief his troops.
Hours later, he’s dead.
Official story: car crash.
Whispers: assassination.
⬇️ 2/
Mozambique night road.
A Land Cruiser overtakes a lorry with a heavy trailer.
The lorry swings left.
The trailer swings right — straight into Tongogara.

He dies instantly.
Oppah Muchinguri, a survivor, called it a “bizarre accident.”
⬇️

🧵 Zimbabwe’s Fallen Retail Giants

Act 1 — The Vanished

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Rainbow & Liberty Cinemas
Launched 1960s–70s, Salisbury & Bulawayo.
Popcorn in paper tubs.
Plush seats under the flicker of the projector.
Queues for Star Wars.
Back to the Future.
Waiting to Exhale.
Piracy and DSTV pulled crowds home.
By the 2010s most screens were dark.
In 2025, only memories roll. 2/
Spinalong Music
Opened early 1980s, Harare.
CD racks that sang.
Cassette spools turning behind the counter.
Matavire.
Mapfumo.
Mtukudzi.
Majaivana lined the shelves.
Piracy and downloads took the floor from under it.
By the mid-2000s the shutters rolled down.
By 2025 only playlists remain.

🧵 Oliver Mtukudzi: The Voice That Betrayed Zimbabwe

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22 September 1952.
Highfield, Salisbury.
A cry cuts through the township.
Harsh.
Rasping.
Unforgettable.
Outside, vadzimu roam the air.
Police trucks patrol.
Overcrowded houses sweat in the heat — paraffin lamps flicker against cracked walls.
Beer foams in shebeens.
Street football scatters dust into the twilight.

Oliver Mtukudzi is born. 2/
25 years later.
1977.

Highfield hums.
Guitars shimmer in crowded bars.
Horns pierce the cigarette smoke.
Drums crack like gunfire in the night.

The Black Spirits form.
Dzandimomotera bursts across the township.
Highfield crowns its griot — tall, black, and husky.
Zimbabwe remains chained.
But freedom vibrates in Mtukudzi’s chords.

🧵 ZANU-PF’s Legacy is Rape

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ZANU-PF calls itself a liberation movement.
But its truest legacy is rape.
A war on women.
Sexual violence defines its politics.
⬇️ 2/
The war years, 1970s.
Women fighters march into Mozambique believing in freedom.
Commanders call them “warm blankets.”
If you refuse, you starve.
Teenage recruits — 15, 16 — coerced into sex for food.
Tongogara knows.
Tongogara does nothing.
Tongogara indulges.
Violates women, girls
⬇️

🧵 Zimbabwe’s Rogue Finance Ministers: 45 Years of Ruin

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Enos Nkala (1980–1983)
Zimbabwe’s first Finance Minister.
He inherited Africa’s second-most advanced economy — rich in infrastructure, industry, and food security.
He had a mandate to build schools, clinics and roads for the majority — and to sustain the growth he inherited.
Instead, GDP growth collapsed from 10.7% in 1980 to 2.3% in 1982.
Inflation shot above 17%.
Deficits neared 10% of GDP as ZANU stuffed the civil service with party loyalists and bailed out failing parastatals.
Nkala turned fiscal management into patronage — and wrecked stability at birth.
Rating: 2/10
⬇️ 2/
Bernard Chidzero (1982/3–1995)
He inherited a strong, diversified economy — shaken by early mismanagement but still rich in industry and food security.
He had a mandate to revive growth while expanding jobs, schools and services for the majority.
Instead, as architect of ESAP, growth slumped to 1% a year.
Formal unemployment rose above 35% by 1995.
The Zim dollar slid from near parity with the US$ in 1983 to Z$9/US$ by 1995.
Factories shuttered. Shops emptied. Workers were sent home.
Under pressure from lenders, he embraced reform — but failed to shield workers, jobs, and services from its blows.
Rating: 3/10
⬇️

🧵 The Death of Peter Pamire — From Millionaire to Borrowdale Mystery

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1990s Harare.
A new class of Black millionaires emerges.
Peter Pamire — suave, ambitious, vice-president of the Affirmative Action Group and chairman of ZANU-PF’s fundraising committee.
By 28, he was a US$ millionaire.
By 35, dead in a Pajero crash that still haunts Zimbabwe.
What happened to Peter Pamire? ⬇️ 2/
He embodied Zimbabwe’s first wave of empowerment tycoons.
Chaired ZANU-PF’s fundraising committee.
Ran Pams Express (Pvt.) Ltd buses — a licensed operator plying Harare–Beitbridge, Chiredzi–Harare, and Harare–Bulawayo routes.
Funded the ruling party.
Stood with Philip Chiyangwa as empowerment took root.
Then, it all ended on a quiet Borrowdale road. ⬇️

🧵 Willowgate — ZANU-PF’s Founding Hustlers

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1988. Willowvale Motor Industries, Harare.
Output: 1,400 cars. Demand: 20,000+.
Ministers jumped the queue.
Sold Mazdas & Toyotas for profit.
The Chronicle broke it wide open.
Mugabe launched the Sandura Commission — a public inquiry that riveted the nation.
He staged justice.
Shielded the system that fed him.
Kept the ZANU-PF rot in place.
Here are the main hustlers. 2/
Enos Nkala — ZANU founder turned wheeler-dealer
Bought cars cheap.
Sold them on Harare’s black market.
9 March 1989 — bank slips exposed him before the inquiry.
He wept on camera — needlessly.
Resigned in shame.
Walked free.
Mugabe let him fall.
Not the rot.

🧵 Lovemore Majaivana: the Ndebele musician Zimbabwe struggled to love

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Born in 1954 in Gweru.
Raised in Mzilikazi, Bulawayo.
From church choirs to cabaret nights in white Rhodesia.
He joined Jobs Combination.
Led The Zulu Band.
His voice carried the city’s soul.
Yet the nation struggled to love him. 2/
1983 — Isitimela arrived.
It won gold for Gallo.
A landmark in Zimbabwean music.
He reworked Ndebele folk songs his mother sang.
Set them against guitars and keyboards.
Bulawayo crowned him its voice.

🧵 Simon Chimbetu — the maestro Zimbabwe turned its back on

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He gave Zimbabwe Dendera — a low-pitched, hornbill-deep soundtrack of love, loss, and liberation.

He sang in Shona.
In Chewa.
In Swahili.

He was revolutionary.
Irresistible.
Unforgettable.
But in the end, Zimbabwe walked away. 2/
Born 1955, Musengezi.
Hotel-band hustler in Highfield.
With brother Naison, he formed the Marxist Brothers.

Their guitars were sharp.
The rhythms deep.
The melodies sweet and sour.

They crafted some of Zimbabwe’s greatest songs.
Denda. Sekuru Ndipiewo Zano. Mwana Wedangwe.

Simon’s Yao ancestry tied him to Tanzania.
And to liberation networks across Africa.

🧵Eddison Zvobgo: Zanu strongman who wasted his brilliance on Mugabe, not Zimbabwe

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Rhodesia in the early 1960s.
Highfield stirs with new politics.
Among the firebrands: Eddison Zvobgo.

Brilliant.
Restless.
Ambitious.

Rises through the NDP.
Then ZANU.
Dreams of power.

In 1961 he marries Julia.
Partner in the struggle.

His pen built power.
But ultimately betrayed him. 2/
Prison follows after a fiery speech at the ZANU Congress in Gwelo, 23 May 1964.
Colonialism is violence and the only way to meet violence is by violence.

Salisbury.
Then Sikombela.
Locked with Mugabe. Sithole. Takawira.

Hard labour.
Grey walls.

Studies through bars.
Earns a law degree.

Mind sharpens.
Cell consumes him.

🧵 Zimbabwe’s Lost Businesses — The Looted, Collapsed & Forgotten Giants

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Ziscosteel
Africa’s steel giant.
Five thousand jobs.
A city built on furnaces.
Bankrupt by the 2000s — wages unpaid, furnaces cold.
Essar came in 2011 — Obert Mpofu blocked the ore rights; the deal froze.
R&F tried in 2017 — factional wars under Mnangagwa killed it.
In 2025, Redcliff is still closed. 2/
Cold Storage Company (CSC)
Zimbabwe’s beef powerhouse.
Exported up to 25,000 tonnes a year to Europe.
Foreign currency. Jobs. Dignity.
From feeding Zimbabwe to importing beef.
Crony boards looted it in the 1990s.
The EU banned exports.
Perrance Shiri backed Boustead’s US$130m rescue in 2019 — it collapsed in 2024.
Abattoirs are largely idle in 2025.

🧵 How ZANU looted Zimbabwe’s War Veterans Compensation Fund

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Created in 1980 to care for the war-injured, by the 1990s it was a slush fund.
Elites faked disabilities — some above 100% — and looted Z$1.5 billion.
That’s about US$150 million.
In 1997, the Chidyausiku Commission exposed the theft.
Here are the names — and the loot. 2/
Joice Mujuru — 55%, Z$389,472
Oppah Muchinguri — 65%, Z$478,166
Perence Shiri — 50%, Z$90,249
Augustine Chihuri — 20%, Z$138,664
Generals, ministers, police chiefs.
All suddenly “disabled.”

🧵South Africa Knew: The Secret Report on Zimbabwe’s Stolen 2002 Election

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In Pretoria — 2002.
President Thabo Mbeki sends two judges, Dikgang Moseneke and Sisi Khampepe, to observe Zimbabwe’s election.
Their mission is quiet assessment.
Their verdict is explosive.
The election is not free.
The election is not fair.
The election is stolen.
This is the secret report Pretoria buried. 2/
On the voter’s roll.
86 000 dual nationals struck off overnight.
It swells to 5.6 million names in a country with just 3.8 million adults.
An independent audit by rights groups found 25% were duplicates, fictitious, or dead.
A ghost army of 1.8 million ready to vote for ZANU-PF.
2 million real voters denied a ballot before polling day.
Polling stations vanish in Harare and Bulawayo.
Queues stretch ten hours.
The vote is a colossal sham.

🧵 Zimbabwe’s 20 Worst Cabinet Members since 1980 Rated — From the merely useless to the utterly destructive.

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At the bottom — Emmerson Mnangagwa (1/10).
Gukurahundi massacres in the 80s.
Congo looting in the 90s.
Civilian killings in 2008, 2018 and 2019.
Botched elections.
Economic fiascos.
Gold Mafia scandal.
Nepotism — gave ministerial posts to his son and nephew.
Zimbabwe’s worst minister, worst vice president, worst president.
Corrupt, violent, ruthless.
The butcher of Zimbabwe’s democracy. 2/

Ignatius Chombo (1/10)
Local Government 2000–15.
Unleashed Operation Murambatsvina in 2005 — 700,000 made homeless.
Hoarded mansions, farms and luxury cars.
After the coup, soldiers found trunks of stolen cash in his home.
Destroyed lives, then looted the rubble — corrupt, greedy, and heartless.

🧵 Kondozi — The $15m Farm ZANU-PF Looted to Death

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April 2004. Easter weekend.
Before dawn, soldiers storm Kondozi Estate.
Crouched low. Guns out.
5,000 workers stand helpless.
ZANU-PF kills a $15m lifeline. 2/
Kondozi wasn’t a white farm.
It was black-led.
Edwin Moyo ran it with the De Klerks.
Their vegetables filled UK supermarket shelves.
US$15 million a year.
Foreign currency flowing.

🧵 Mutumwa Mawere — The Tycoon ZANU Made and Unmade

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In the late 1990s, he embodied Zimbabwe’s new dream.
From Bindura to sprawling empires, his rise was meteoric.
But in Zimbabwe, brilliance is always conditional — until ZANU takes it back.
His rise was only the beginning of a certain fall. 2/
An economist by training.
A World Bank Young Professional.
Later a Senior Investment Officer at the IFC.
He spoke the language of the IMF and World Bank.
A sharp mind returning home to build.

🧵 ZANU’s Congo Heist — How Generals & Cronies Turned War Into a Billion-Dollar Loot

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Aug 1998 — Zimbabwe’s economy is buckling, factories silent, bread queues winding through Harare.
Instead of fixing the crisis, Mugabe dispatches ~11,000 soldiers to prop up Laurent Kabila’s crumbling DRC regime.
The pretext: Pan-African solidarity.
The reality: ZANU-PF hijacking the state — using taxpayers’ money and the national army as a private investment arm for generals, ministers, and businessmen. It was foreign policy as organised crime. 2/
In Kinshasa’s war rooms, Zimbabwe’s delegation moved like buyers at an auction.
In essence, it was a cabal — Mnangagwa brokering politics, Zvinavashe guaranteeing military muscle, Shiri running the airlift, Sekeremayi tying up the paperwork.
Orbiting them: Rautenbach (cobalt), Bredenkamp (guns & mining), al-Shanfari (diamonds).
They weren’t defending sovereignty — they were shopping for mineral kingdoms at gunpoint.

🧵 Black Friday — The Day Zimbabwe’s Economy Fell Off a Cliff

14 Nov 1997.
Morning: Harare’s currency dealers are shouting over each other, the phones won’t stop ringing, and prices on the board are spinning out of control.
By nightfall, the Zimbabwean dollar had lost 71% of its value. The stock market was gutted. Ordinary Zimbabweans woke poorer than they’d ever been.
This wasn’t “market forces.” It was political arson. 1/
By the mid-90s, Zimbabwe’s economy was slowing: falling exports, rising debt, and an increasingly restless population.
The loudest anger came from war veterans — ex-guerrillas abandoned after 1980 while ZANU-PF’s ruling elite gorged themselves on state contracts, farms, and foreign trips.
"We liberated this country. We will not die poor," warned one vet leader. Translation: pay us, or face chaos.

🧵 The Killing of Solomon Mujuru — How to Erase a General in Zimbabwe

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Beatrice, 16 Aug 2011.
In the dead of night, flames consumed the farmhouse of General Solomon Mujuru — war hero, liberation commander, first black army chief, husband to Vice President Joice Mujuru.
When the fire died, there was little left but ash, a few bones, and unanswered questions.
The State said: smoke inhalation.

Zimbabweans, hardened by decades of “accidental” deaths in politics, knew better.
This looked like the latest entry in a long ledger of assassinations dressed up as misfortune. 2/
Mujuru was no ordinary politician. He was the kingmaker.
A guerrilla legend known as Rex Nhongo, he’d fought from the front, commanded with charm and menace, and made friends in every trench of the liberation war.

The man who once secured Robert Mugabe’s grip on ZANU… was now backing his wife in a bitter succession battle against Emmerson Mnangagwa — a fight that had split the party down the middle.

At stake: the presidency, the diamonds, the machinery of state.

In a party where rivals vanish, factional warfare isn’t fought with ballots — it’s fought with bullets, poison, and, sometimes… fire.

🧵 The Nhari Rebellion — ZANLA’s Civil War in the Bush

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Nov–Dec 1974, Chifombo (Zambia–Mozambique border)
In bush camps, ZANLA fighters rot with malaria, stomachs empty, boots worn to rags.
In Lusaka, ZANU’s leaders dine well, drive imported cars.
Commanders Thomas Nhari (Raphael Chinyanganya) and Dakarai Badza decide the real threat to the revolution may be inside the movement itself. 2️⃣
The Spark — Frontline Fury
ZANLA exploded from about 300 fighters in 1972 to over 5,000 by 1974 — but food, weapons, and medicine didn’t grow with the army. Fighters starved while the leadership thrived.
Ammunition was hoarded. Officers abused women fighters and handed out promotions to friends.
Nhari saw the “people’s army” turning into a warlord’s playground.

🧵 Chiwenga, Helicopters & Mass Graves — The Chiadzwa Diamond Slaughter

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October 2008 in Chiadzwa. Operation Hakudzokwi—“You Will Not Return”—was unleashed by Defence Forces Commander Constantine Chiwenga and Air Force chief Perrance Shiri. Over 800 soldiers, police, and spies stormed the diamond fields. Helicopters rained bullets down on miners scrambling in the dust. At least 200 were killed in weeks—local whispers say far more. 2/
One victim named — 32-year-old businessman Maxwell Mandebvu-Mabota — was lured under a bribe of safety and tortured by soldiers with iron bars, rifle butts, fists, and tree branches. His lungs were pierced, his kidneys failed, and he died en route to South Africa days later.