The Sunday News
Khumbulani Vodloza Sibanda, Correspondent
SINCE the Zimbabwean telecommunications mogul Strive Masiyiwa donated US$10 million towards the fight against the cholera outbreak in Harare and other centres in September last year and declared two months later that the prevailing regime of sanctions against Zimbabwe should be removed, he has suffered several verbal and cyber attacks from largely anti-Government elements in the society.
What seems to have angered most of his attackers, and those from the opposition, is his description of President Emmerson Mnangagwa as sincere in his economic turnaround efforts. All along they thought that he was one of them and his perceived volte-face really incensed them.
Systematic attacks
The attacks against Masiyiwa are part of a systematic onslaught on all alternative voices of people who have come to the realisation that the opposition has been a failure since 1999 and that chances of it landing power are getting slimmer with each passing day especially given the kind of leadership which is now at its helm. The attacks have also exposed petty jealousy on the part of some failed businessmen who strangely think that Zanu-PF or Government owe them something.
Even lightweight opposition figures such as the MDC Kuwadzana legislator, Chalton Hwende also hung out his brains for Zimbabwe to see their insides when he called for a boycott of Econet Wireless in retaliation for Masiyiwa’s position on the new dispensation and the need to remove sanctions. Progressive Zimbabweans showed him how petty and hare-brained his idea was and he ended up shamefully pulling down the Econet boycott tweet.
MDC activist, anti-Government detractor and Human Rights Watch employee, Dewa Mavhinga who was part of the December 2017 opposition delegation which travelled to the United States to appeal for the extension of sanctions against Zimbabwe among other things was obviously miffed by Masiyiwa’s stance. He led the cyber-bullying of Masiyiwa’s wife, Tsitsi last December. The attackers relentlessly haunted and hounded the Masiyiwas until the couple ended up being forced to close their twitter accounts.
A surprise attack on Masiyiwa was the one mounted by the South Africa-based failed businessman, Mutumwa Mawere who hosted former Zanu-PF Masvingo Chairman and G40 element, Daniel Shumba who made sensational claims that the telecommunications billionaire was funding his (Shumba’s) wife to divorce him. Shumba stated that the reason for the alleged funding of his wife by Masiyiwa was that he (Shumba) was in possession of recordings of how Masiyiwa stole Econet Wireless shares in connivance with former banker, Nigel Chanakira.
Eddie Cross
The Econet Wireless founder and chairman has not been alone in this predicament. When former opposition politician and economist, Edward Cross broke ranks with the MDC’s anti-Zanu PF stance early in 2018 and opined that the new dispensation had ushered in investor confidence, he was hauled over the coals by members of the MDC for taking a position, which is constitutionally guaranteed by the supreme law of the land, the Constitution, and eventually retired from active politics.
Trevor Ncube
Another victim of the MDC and other people who are bitter with President Mnangagwa’s 30 July win and administration is Alpha Media Holdings (AMH) owner, Trevor Ncube. Ncube is among the prominent people who supported the late Morgan Tsvangirai in 1999 when the MDC was founded. Since May 1996 his weekly and, later, daily papers were very critical of Government. When President Mnangagwa assumed power in November 2017, he immediately supported him and his administration.
When AMH was granted radio and television licences in September last year the attacks against Ncube even worsened with some accusing him of “selling out” by supporting the President and Government for a licence. People such as the self-exiled fugitive, Professor Jonathan Moyo even made lies and unproven insinuation that the President was an undeclared shareholder in Ncube’s empire.
Obert Gutu
Since parting ways with the MDC to form the MDC-T Khupe faction, Obert Gutu has been behaving, speaking and tweeting like a progressive Zimbabwean. Despite being an opposition leader, unlike his former colleagues in the Chamisa faction, his words have been promotive of the greater good of Zimbabweans and for that he has invited the irrational ire of people such as Hwende who attack him at every turn.
The pettiness of the attackers
An analysis of some of the Masiyiwa attackers reveals the petty jealousy of some failed businesspeople, the naivety of some so-called opposition figures and the bitterness of those whose political careers and grand plans came crashing around them in November 2017.
Like the MDC that he supports, Mavhinga survives on the suffering of the people of Zimbabwe. Instruments such as sanctions which prop up their enterprise are very dear to them and anyone who supports their removal is bound to be viciously attacked to protect their means of getting Western purses opened for them.
Hwende is a known Nelson Chamisa worshipper. He literary sings praises of the very ground that Chamisa walks on. In the process of trying to earn pats from the MDC leader, Hwende ends up tripping himself on many an occasion forcing him to routinely retract some of his social media messages which expose his poor political mettle and judgement. Some people say he is a small time businessperson but he has not even donated a thousand dollars to the people who voted for him, if ever he has, we await to know. His baseless attack against Masiyiwa betrays his petty jealousy of the billionaire.
Hwende is representative of the political naivety of the opposition who believe that their opponents should be everyone’s enemy. Yes, Masiyiwa was aggrieved by the previous administration which denied him an operating licence for two years. It is the former President Robert Mugabe and his then Minister of Information, Posts and Telecommunications, Joyce Mujuru who did that and not President Mnangagwa. His fight was with Mugabe and not Zanu-PF.
Even if it was President Mnangagwa, Masiyiwa has a right to move from the past and embrace the present without some failed opposition playing chaperon on him. Although he remains apolitical, by standing with Zimbabweans he has demonstrated that he is a better “politician” than all the opposition combined.
What can one say of the failed business duo of Mawere and Shumba? Mawere’s empire was not just the two asbestos mines which he claims he was dispossessed by the previous administration. The fact that all other entities lie tucked in the Zimbabwean business graveyard foregrounds his failure and his beef against Masiyiwa is therefore mere petty jealousy.
When Masiyiwa set out in business he was a then Posts and Telecommunications (PTC) employee. Around 1993 he approached his employer for a partnership to set up a mobile telephone business but he was turned down. In 2002 Shumba’s TeleAccess, which used the promising tagline, “Now you can,” was licensed to compete with one of PTC successor entities, TelOne but the venture failed to take off despite abundant funding from CBZ Bank and the National Social Security Authority (NSSA).
Given this scenario where Econet Wireless is now a global corporate behemoth while TeleAcces failed dismally one cannot help but pick a tinge of jealousy in Shumba’s charges against Masiyiwa. As for Prof Jonathan Moyo, it is a public secret that he nurses a grudge against President Mnangagwa over the latter’s scuttling of the G40 succession plan in Zanu-PF. Anyone who recognises and praises the President and his administration naturally becomes a target of his vile but unjustified attacks.
Notwithstanding the unnecessary attacks on the President and progressive Zimbabweans such as Masiyiwa, Ncube, Gutu and Cross among others, the country’s fortunes are definitely going to turn around and lives are going to improve.
