By Tawonga Kurewa
The late, great Alex Magaisa left us with many potent allegories, but none as chillingly prescient as the legend of Mamvura.
May his soul rest in peace.
His tale of a man the village dismissed as unwell who then proceeded to drive a bus was a stark warning against complacency; a prophecy that the unthinkable can happen when a nation dismisses blatant ambition as a joke.
Today, Magaisa’s prophecy is unfolding, not merely with a single bus, but within the very fabric of the company that owns it. The ZANU-PF party, the historic Owner of Zimbabwe’s political franchise, has a Company Manager in President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who appears more terrified of his duties than of the trespasser in the depot.
And our new Mamvura is Kudakwashe Tagwirei, the grand looting architect of state capture and leader of the Zvigananda faction, a man with no legitimate license to drive, but with pockets so deep he believes he can buy the driver’s seat, the bus, and perhaps even the Manager himself.
This frightening spectacle is not without precedent; it is a painful echo of a recent, bitter history.
Before Tagwirei, there was another Mamvura, Grace Mugabe, who mistook her proximity to the old Company CEO as a license to drive.
Her ambition, once dismissed as a shrill joke, became a clear and present danger to the company’s charter.
In that moment, the true owners of the company—the shareholders, the people of Zimbabw, took to the streets in their hundreds of thousands.
Supported by the company’s original security detail, the army, they rose as one to reclaim their asset from the brink.
It was these very shareholders who, in the chaotic aftermath, sadly handed the keys to the current Manager, Emmerson Mnangagwa, trusting him to steer the company back to its founding principles.
That he now presides over a near-identical crisis is not just a failure of management; it is a profound betrayal of that historic, popular mandate.
This modern Mamvura, Tagwirei, has been officially deemed unfit to drive. After a veteran supervisor, Vice President Constantino Chiwenga, had to physically remove him from a high-level strategy meeting, the Owner (ZANU-PF) issued a formal memo.
This circular made it clear that according to company policy, Tagwirei is “ineligible” for a driver’s license, lacking the requisite five years of service at a senior level. The rules, written by the Owner, are unambiguous.
The duty of any competent Company Manager, upon seeing an unauthorized person attempt to operate company machinery, is to enforce the rules decisively. Yet, what has been Manager Mnangagwa’s response?
He offered a weak “endorsement” of the supervisor’s actions and muttered vague warnings about “zvigananda,” or tenderpreneurs.
This is the equivalent of a manager seeing a trespasser ejected from the main depot, only to watch him bribe the mechanics at a smaller branch in Epworth without consequence.
When this same Mamvura used his own money to rent out the company’s main hall for a meeting with church leaders, brazenly inviting the Manager to be the guest of honour, the Manager did not cancel the event or have him thrown out for his audacity.
He simply chose not to attend, hiding behind the excuse of parliamentary business. This was not an act of authority; it was an act of fear. It was the desperate move of a manager who has lost control of his own staff.
He is terrified to confront Mamvura directly because he knows that Tagwirei’s money has bought the loyalty of too many people within the company itself .
This paralysis amounts to a grotesque betrayal of the Owner. ZANU-PF’s very constitution speaks of building a “socialist society” and ensuring “justice and equity for all”.
This is the company’s mission statement. Yet, its appointed Manager is allowing the entire enterprise to be hijacked by a ruthless kleptocrat whose only ideology is the dollar.
The Manager seems to have forgotten that he serves at the pleasure of the Owner—the party and its foundational principles—not the other way around.
The Manager’s dereliction is made worse by the open mutiny within his ranks. A company cannot function when depot foremen and branch managers pledge allegiance to a wealthy trespasser over their own boss. Yet this is what we see.
Ministers like Tino Machakaire and Tatenda Mavetera, who should be loyal company employees, act as Mamvura’s errand boys, prominently featuring at his public spectacles and leveraging their positions to rally support for his ascendancy.
These are the ambitious young loyalists who, forgetting the lessons of the past, have hitched their wagons to Mamvura’s cash, creating the “Unholy Trinity” of patronage that seeks to crown the grand looting architect.
The Manager’s failure to discipline this insubordination proves he is not just a weak leader; he is a captive in his own office.
Ultimately, the cost of this corporate decay is paid by the passengers—the ordinary people of Zimbabwe.
While the Manager dithers and Mamvura joyrides, the buses are falling apart.
The nation’s treasury is bled dry by murky fuel deals and inflated contracts, leaving hospitals without medicine and children to die for want of a cancer machine.
This is the direct result of a philosophy, championed by Mamvura himself, that calls anyone not profiting from a government tender “foolish”.
This is the contemptible worldview of a man who sees the national bus not as a public service, but as a private tanker to be siphoned for personal gain, mocking the honest passengers who paid for the fuel in the first place.
The company charter is being violated. A veteran supervisor has shown what courage looks like, but it is the Manager’s job to run the company.
Instead, he hides, hoping the problem of Mamvura will simply disappear. But Mamvura grows bolder with every display of managerial weakness.
The passengers, the people of Zimbabwe, are trapped on the bus, watching in horror as an illegitimate driver revs the engine.
The question is no longer whether the Manager will act, but whether the shareholders, the people and the Owner, the true revolutionary spirit of the party, will awaken to fire a manager who refuses to do his job.
