At least Rhodes had established business interests: where are own ruling elite acquiring their wealth?

Tendai Ruben Mbofana

This morning, I came across a news article whose sheer disingenuousness immediately caught my attention.

To directly receive my articles please join my WhatsApp Channel on: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaqprWCIyPtRnKpkHe08

To compare the predatory extraction of Cecil John Rhodes and his British South Africa Company (BSAC) to the unashamed wealth accumulation by Zimbabwe’s modern ruling elite is to misunderstand the very nature of enterprise, even in its most oppressive historical forms. 

While no one in their right mind can ever condone colonial subjugation, land grabs, or the oppression of native populations, an undeniable distinction remains that exposes the tragedy of post-independence governance. 

Rhodes, for all his brutal imperial sins, was an actual businessman. 

He possessed identifiable commercial operations, raised private capital, took massive financial risks, established global supply chains, and left tangible industrial footprints that exist to this day. 

One can point to the mines in Kwekwe, the vast railway network connecting Southern Africa, the founding of entire towns like Gweru and Harare, or the global corporate engine of De Beers and see the physical, organized machinery through which he accrued his fortune.

Can the same be said for the ruling elite in Zimbabwe today? 

When political analysts and civil society leaders draw parallels between the Mnangagwa administration and the BSAC’s “Loot Committee,” they miss a crucial nuance. 

The BSAC operated via a chartered, audited corporate structure; today’s ruling class operates via opaque, unaccountable state capture. 

The recent high-profile scandals, such as the charges involving 22-year-old Kelsea Tafirenyika—linked to the President’s family and facing accusations surrounding multi-million-dollar asset portfolios and illicit dealings—are emblematic of a far deeper systemic decay. 

A twenty-two-year-old associate suddenly connected to millions in unexplained assets or prime real estate is not an anomaly in modern Zimbabwe; it is the standard operational model.

Where are these individuals acquiring such staggering wealth? 

If one were to demand financial records, audited balance sheets, or verified commercial operations from these overnight tycoons, the trail almost inevitably vanishes into thin air. 

Rhodes could easily produce financial statements and point to a shaft in the ground to explain his accounts. 

By contrast, we routinely witness contemporary political figures, their family members, and well-connected cronies losing millions of dollars in cash to domestic disputes or personal fallouts, leaving the public to ask the obvious question.

If $9 million or $10 million can be lost or accumulated on a whim by an associate, how many hundreds of millions are truly sitting in hidden accounts or in a vault at home? 

We watch flamboyant characters gift luxury fleets of sports cars and hand out millions in raw cash, yet none can point to a viable, tax-paying manufacturing plant, an agricultural processing enterprise, or a legitimate export business that accounts for such immense liquidity.

This is not business; it is primitive, unbridled accumulation at the expense of a collapsing nation. 

When Rhodes built his wealth, he organized heavy industry, establishing mining companies, power lines, processing plants, and urban infrastructure that survived well over a century. 

The current ruling class, by contrast, operates like economic parasites on a host they did not build. 

Instead of constructing new industries or expanding towns, they harvest the proceeds of existing gold reserves, siphon off public tenders, manipulate foreign currency allocations, and monetize state access through gold mafia syndicates and cartel monopolies. 

They leave behind no legacy of manufacturing, no institutional wealth, no sustained job creation, and no enduring national infrastructure—only crumbling hospitals, degraded roads, drying water systems, and impoverished citizens struggling under relentless economic hardship.

Forty-six years after independence, the tragedy of Zimbabwe is that its people are forced to watch a political aristocracy live in unfathomable opulence without a single traceable commercial foundation to justify it. 

The 2017 promises to target “criminals surrounding the presidency” have dissolved into an era where the presidency and its inner circle preside over unprecedented financial opacity. 

Constitutional amendments are rushed through not to build the nation or improve the lives of the populace, but to consolidate power and insulate the politically privileged from accounting for their sudden fortunes.

Love him or hate him, Cecil John Rhodes was an industrialist who built empires, established towns, and developed heavy commercial enterprises whose remnants still power parts of our nation today. 

Zimbabwe’s post-independence rulers cannot even produce a believable story. 

The tragedy of our nation is not just that its wealth is being stolen, but that it is being looted by people who cannot even pretend to be businessmen.

• Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to contact him on +263715667700 or mbofana.tendairuben73@gmail.com