Chivayo’s attempts to muzzle the media can never be justified: A response to Loughty Dube

Tendai Ruben Mbofana

The Phathisani Sibanda vehicle controversy, involving a lavish Toyota Fortuner and a US$30,000 “lunch money” windfall from controversial businessman Wicknell Chivayo, has exposed the deep-seated rot within Zimbabwe’s media ecosystem. 

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Yet, nothing illustrates this institutional decay more vividly than the response from those tasked with guarding the gates of media ethics. 

A recent personal write-up by Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe (VMCZ) Executive Director Loughty Dube—pushed out only after being publicly challenged by journalist and lawyer Mlondolozi Ndlovu—offers a masterclass in bureaucratic sidestepping, intellectual dishonesty, and diplomatic appeasement. 

Rather than delivering an uncompromising defense of journalistic integrity, Dube treats the public to a calculated tightrope walk that normalizes corruption, sanitizes a controversial figure, and carves out self-exempting loopholes for media elites.

Dube’s linguistic concessions represent the first major failure of his analysis. 

Throughout the statement, he repeatedly refers to Chivayo as a “philanthropist” and deferentially accords him the title “Cde” (Comrade). 

In the Zimbabwean context, these are not neutral terms. 

Chivayo is a man whose name is permanently mired in multi-million-dollar public tender scandals, symbolizing the toxic nexus of political patronage and overnight wealth. 

To brand him a philanthropist on an official media oversight platform is to actively participate in the laundering of his public reputation. 

It reframes predatory, state-tied patronage as altruism. 

By using the ruling-party moniker “Cde,” the head of an independent media watchdog signals a profound deference to state power. 

You cannot effectively critique media capture when you adopt the flattering vernacular of the captors.

Equally disingenuous is Dube’s antiquated assertion that bribery usually happens quietly in dark corners, suggesting that because Chivayo’s gifts were loudly broadcasted on social media, they somehow elude the definition of an inducement. 

This is a dangerously naive reading of modern corruption. 

Today, capture does not hide in the shadows; it operates as a public spectacle. 

By open-handedly distributing luxury vehicles and thousands of dollars to entire newsroom divisions, the benefactor establishes an unassailable aura of generosity. 

It creates an immediate, immense psychological and social debt. 

A media personality driving a brand-new luxury SUV gifted on a live broadcast is structurally incapable of holding that benefactor accountable, regardless of whether the keys were handed over in a dark alley or streamed on TikTok. 

Open bribery is still bribery; it merely uses publicity as an armor against accountability.

In a telling move, Dube attempts to muddy the ethical waters by comparing Chivayo’s spontaneous car donations to institutional journalism awards run by organizations like VMCZ or the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists (ZUJ). 

He notes that corporate-sponsored prizes frequently exceed the US$100 gift limit, asking if media houses should stop reporters from entering them. 

While Dube introduces this as a hypothetical dilemma to confuse the issue, he accidentally stumbles upon a profound truth that he is too cowardly to articulate: corporate-sponsored journalism awards are themselves a highly effective form of legalized bribery.

When mining giants, financial institutions, and state-connected conglomerates fund lavish media awards, they are not celebrating truth; they are buying compliance and purchasing specific narratives. 

Cash-strapped journalists, desperate to supplement survival wages, quickly learn to pivot their reporting to align with corporate interests. 

Hard-hitting investigative journalism that exposes systemic corruption or corporate malfeasance is passed over, while public relations fluff disguised as “developmental reporting” is rewarded with high-value cash prizes. 

By defending this system, Dube exposes the soft capture of his own regulatory framework, where corporate inducement is perfectly acceptable as long as it is wrapped in an official trophy and presented at a gala dinner.

Perhaps the most glaring and self-serving blind spot in Dube’s piece is his hypothetical self-exemption. 

He asserts that if Chivayo were to “reward” him with a Toyota Fortuner and US$50,000 for fuel in recognition of his role as Chairperson of the Southern African Press Councils (SAPC), he would gladly accept it because he is no longer in active journalism. 

This argument displays an astonishing disregard for the realities of soft power. 

While Dube may not be writing daily news copy, he sits at the absolute apex of regional media regulation and ethics. 

For the umpire of media standards to declare that he would accept luxury vehicles from a politically connected billionaire because he has no direct authority over specific editors is highly disingenuous. 

Power in the media matrix is not just held by the reporter holding the microphone; it is held by the regulators who determine what behavior is permissible. 

When the umpire openly validates accepting a bribe, the entire game is rigged.

Dube then engages in semantic gymnastics by debating whether Phathisani is a “bona fide journalist” or merely a “DJ and entertainer,” suggesting that content creators operating adjacent to the newsroom should not automatically fall under strict journalistic ethical codes. 

This is a distinction without a difference when it comes to institutional credibility. 

To the audience, Phathisani operates under the Capitalk FM and Zimpapers banner. 

When a prominent on-air personality accepts an extravagant gift from a controversial newsmaker, the reputational damage lands squarely on the brand, obliterating the public’s trust in the entire station’s independence. 

Shielding an entertainer behind a legalistic definition of journalism ignores the reality of media capture: the public does not separate the DJ from the newsroom when evaluating a station’s integrity.

While Dube rightly exposes the corporate hypocrisy of Zimpapers management—who ordered employees to surrender the excess “lunch money” unless it was redirected to purchase vehicles for company use—he completely abdicates the agency of the newsroom itself. 

He blames the incident on a failure of staff induction and education, treating the 31 employees who pocketed the cash as passive victims of poor corporate training. 

This ignores the culture of complacency within the newsroom. 

Editorial policy might be drafted by media owners, but it is the journalists, presenters, and producers who actively push it through the airwaves and onto the pages. 

The fact that dozens of media workers saw absolutely nothing wrong with accepting cash from a heavily compromised tenderpreneur points to a deep-seated ethical decay that cannot be solved by a simple HR induction. 

They were not uneducated; they were compromised accomplices.

The ultimate failure of Dube’s statement lies in its profound lack of moral courage. 

At a time when Zimbabwean journalism is starving for robust, independent, and fearless leadership to fight off systemic capture, the head of the voluntary media council chose to pen a diplomatic defense wrapped in caveats, excuses, and institutional protections. 

By focusing on gift ceilings, contractual loopholes, and definitions of journalism, Dube ignored the massive elephant in the room: the calculated, state-backed financial co-optation of the entire media ecosystem from the top down. 

The Phathisani controversy is not a complex ethical puzzle requiring nuanced debate; it is a clear-cut case of media capture. 

By failing to call it out as such, and by justifying how he himself would accept a similar car, Loughty Dube did not defend media ethics—he exposed how thoroughly compromised the guardians of those ethics truly are.

• Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. To directly receive his articles please join his WhatsApp Channel on: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaqprWCIyPtRnKpkHe08