🧵 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.

🧵 The Assassination of Herbert Chitepo — ZANU’s Inside Job

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18 March 1975, 8:00 AM. Lusaka, Zambia.
A VW Beetle explodes outside No. 150 Muramba Road, Chilenje South.
Inside: Herbert Wiltshire Chitepo, ZANU Chairman.
Killed instantly alongside his bodyguard Silas Shamiso.
A local boy, Sambwa Chaya, later dies from injuries.
At first, all fingers pointed at Rhodesia.
The truth was far worse. 2/
Chitepo was ZANU’s political architect — the man holding together a liberation movement already fracturing from within.
He was a Manyika.
By 1973, Karanga commanders dominated the Military High Command.
Factional mistrust was now lethal.

Rise Kagona is sitting in an Edinburgh cafe. It's a warm August afternoon but he is dressed for winter, swaddled in a bomber jacket and a thick woollen shirt, the ever-present baseball hat glued to his head as he sips his tea and wonders. A quiet, thoughtful man, he wonders about a lot of things: the way humans impose boundaries on a world belonging solely to the Creator; how the value of life back home in Zimbabwe continues to deteriorate; above all, he wonders what on earth happened to the Bhundu Boys.

It was, the band's guitarist, singer and founder member recalls with surprise, 20 years ago. In May 1986, Kagona and his young compatriots - singer and guitarist Biggie Tembo, bass player David Mankaba, drummer Kenny Chitsvatsva and keyboard player Shakespeare Kangwena - landed at Gatwick and stepped into the unknown. For a short spell they were welcomed with open arms, the infectious, virile joy of their music seducing all-comers and earning them a support slot for Madonna at Wembley and a record deal with Warner Brothers. The Bhundu Boys were by no means the first stars of what we now understand as world music - that accolade could go to anyone from Ravi Shankar to Bob Marley - but they were the first African band to make an appreciable impact upon the archetypal NME-reading, gig-going, Peel-listening Eighties music fan.

And when it fell apart, it did so in truly tragic fashion: Aids, suicide, prison, poverty. Kagona now lives hand-to-mouth in a farm cottage in Scotland and is only just beginning to pick up the threads of his life and career. His friends weren't quite so lucky.

Graeme Thomson—17 September 2006 The Bhundu Boys did not arrive in Britain as unknown entities. They were met at the airport by 'Champion' Doug Veitch, a Scotsman whose unique brand of Caledonian Cajun swing had briefly made him an NME favourite in his own right. Veitch was a world music pioneer. He had founded the Discafrique label with Owen Elias and discovered the Bhundu Boys when in Harare, subsequently releasing three of their songs on the 1985 'Discafrique' EP. The music entranced Andy Kershaw and John Peel, who championed the band and other Zimbabwean groups such as the Four Brothers on their Radio 1 shows.

Post-Live Aid and amid the growing clamour to end apartheid, the cultural and political climate in Britain was ripe for the Bhundu Boys. According to Veitch, they arrived for the six-date tour, starting that night in Glasgow, clutching only their toilet bags. 'Not an instrument in sight,' he laughs today. 'We flew up to Scotland to buy them instruments while they took the slowest train possible to Glasgow and walked straight onstage.' Although he had released their records, Veitch had never actually heard them perform live and was 'praying' they could play. 'Ten seconds into the first number you knew,' he says. 'They played for three hours and were absolutely fucking sensational.'

They had learnt their trade in the less than salubrious nightspots of Harare, playing from 7pm until 4am without a break and often without acknowledgement or recognition. 'In Zimbabwe, if you play for only one-and-a-half hours, people will stone you to death,' says Kagona, matter-of-factly. Glasgow must have felt a little like home.

Tongogara’s undisguised hostility against Herbert Chitepo eventually led to accusations that he had killed Chitepo, despite the fact that there was no evidence to support this claim. Chitepo was killed by a car bomb in March 1975. What was evident was that Tongogara had utilised his position as head of the army to surround Chitepo with “guards” who were personally loyal to Tongogara. These “guards” were not only assigned to protect, but also to spy on Chitepo, and to report on any meetings with and messages to him. It was during this period that the security department of ZANLA, headed by Cletus Chigove, began to play the dual role of providing “protection” while at the same time spying on the person who was being protected. This dual role has continued with the incorporation of the ZANLA security department into the Central Intelligence Organisation after independence. Chitepo was not slow to realise that he was surrounded by hostile forces in the person of the very comrades who were responsible for guarding him.

Fay Chung—Re-Living the Second Chimurenga. Memories from Zimbabwe's Liberation Struggle Tongogara’s suspicions against Chitepo stemmed from Chitepo’s handling of the trial of the Nhari rebels. As was earlier noted,
Tongogara felt that Chitepo had been too lenient on the rebels, given that they had disrupted the liberation struggle and had killed some 70 guerrillas who had refused to join their rebellion. He therefore came to the con- clusion that Chitepo was sympathetic towards the rebels, a suspicion fuelled by the fact that Chitepo belonged to the same ethnic group, the Manyika, as did some of the other supporters of the rebels, namely Simpson Mutambanengwe and Noel Mukono. Tongogara’s reaction was to execute by firing squad the rebels who had been left in his custody, a decision that was to have far-reaching effects within ZANLA and ZANU, and to affect the outcome of the liberation struggle for Zimbabwe.

The elite’s favourite businessman was Roger Boka, a Harare tycoon who launched his own bank and handed out millions in loans to prominent politicians and businessmen. In 1995, against the advice of its own banking regulators, the government awarded Boka a banking licence and helped to get his United Merchant Bank off the ground, channelling government business his way, including a deal to issue debt on behalf of the state-owned Cold Storage Company. Boka’s style became increasingly flamboyant. He often moved around in a motorcade and liked to distribute $100 notes liberally.

Boka then set his sights on building what he described as the biggest tobacco auction floors in the world, once the preserve of white business. The floors opened in 1997, and in March 1998 Boka offered 40 percent of the shares to the public. His business associates hailed him as “an economic hero.” The “Boka Tobacco Revolution,” as it was called, was said to mark “the Genesis of Zimbabwe’s economic jihad.” Six weeks later, his empire collapsed overnight. In April 1998 the United Merchant Bank had its licence revoked after it was discovered that the bank could no longer meet depositors’ claims and that its liquidity ratio was too low to meet debt obligations and other liabilities.

Upon investigation, Boka was found to have issued fraudulent Cold Storage Company bills to the value of Z $945 million (about US $50 million). He had also siphoned off nearly US $21 million of depositors’ funds to his offshore accounts. The scale of the fraud threatened to cause the collapse of other financial institutions, which faced huge losses, forcing the government to step in with a rescue package.

Mugabe: Power, Plunder, and the Struggle for Zimbabwe's Future The central bank governor, Leonard Tsumba, was scathing in his indictment of what had happened and censured the government for issuing Boka a licence in the first place: “UMB was grossly mismanaged and was operated in total disregard of laws, rules and regulations. Funds were lost through poor lending, insider loans, externalisation of funds and gross mismanagement.” The bank was insolvent to the tune of Z $2.6 billion, said Tsumba.