By Cde Honest Vhura Hombe

Vice President Constantino Chiwenga stepped up to the mic and dropped a bombshell on corruption, phantom businesses, and all those “shadowy dealings” that make Zimbabwe’s economy look like a byproduct of a tenderpreneur manifesto.

Speaking at the ZNCC congress in Victoria Falls, Chiwenga ditched the usual niceties and launched into a sermon worthy of Moses, ironically while reminding the nation, “The time of Moses is no longer here.”

“We must shun unscrupulous, so-called business people operating from briefcases with no traceable capital or legitimate enterprise,” he said, dropping one holy rebuke after another.

He slammed the “phantom entrepreneurship” culture, where money miraculously materialises “without any known source,” describing it as “ethically bankrupt” and “economically corrosive.” 

Tagwirei’s meteoric rise within ZANU PF apparently didn’t sit well with Chiwenga who seems to be the only person in presidium nauseated by Zviganandas. 

Tagwirei had just declared, “If you are not a tenderpreneur, you are foolish.” 

Right in the faces of ordinary masses who have government tender deficiency and subjected to abject poverty 

The two men were once close, until Chiwenga fell ill in 2018 and Tagwirei made himself at home with President Emmerson Mnangagwa. 

Tagwirei has now upgraded from political donor to central committee heavyweight—and, if rumours are true, is eyeing a Politburo post.

Tagwirei now fancies himself a potential successor to VP Kembo Mohadi, whose political pulse is reportedly fading faster than a Zim dollar on payday.

But Chiwenga isn’t buying the “money = merit” formula. 

“Money does not fall from the heavens,” he warned, “real businesses are built through hard work, discipline, sacrifice and value creation.” 

Yes, folks, the Generari just re-invented capitalism and cancelled the Tagwirei Masterclass on Tenderpreneurship.

The VP called for a purge of rent-seeking, patronage and muddy dealings, just as Tagwirei’s name keeps popping up in Command Agriculture audits, parliamentary critiques, and elite WhatsApp groups with words like “state capture” and “that fuel guy.”

Even some within ZANU PF are twitching. 

War vets and old guard stalwarts say Tagwirei’s rise is bankrolled, not blood-earned. 

Civil society calls him the poster boy for institutionalised looting. 

He calls it “enterprise.”

With the post-Mnangagwa succession race heating up, Chiwenga’s speech reads like a political ultimatum wrapped in economic gospel.