ZANU PF’s survival has never been built on delivery or accountability — it thrives on patronage.
Power is maintained not through policies that uplift the people, but through gifts, bribes and selective generosity that entrench loyalty at the top while ordinary citizens sink deeper into despair.
The ruling party has perfected two arts: patronage and entrapment.
And right now, its provincial chairpersons find themselves entangled in both.
No one will dare say “no” to the ED2030 push.
Not when the ground has been carefully prepared to make refusal impossible.
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Just days after angry youths in Chinhoyi booed Justice minister Ziyambi Ziyambi over unfulfilled promises of land and cattle — a small but telling act of defiance, the ruling party responded in the usual fashion — not by addressing grievances, but by reinforcing loyalty at the top.
Their anger is a true reflection of widespread frustration in Zimbabwe, where broken promises are the norm and loyalty is only rewarded if you sit at the high table of power.
Enter Wicknell Chivayo.
On Monday, Zanu PF chose to buy loyalty before it collapses.
The Zanu PF benefactor donated 10 brand-new 2025 Toyota Land Cruiser LC300 VX-R vehicles, one for each provincial chairperson.
As if that was not enough, he topped it off with US$100 000 cash for each chairperson, supposedly to “support empowerment projects”.
On the surface, this looks like philanthropy.
In reality, it is a golden cage.
The message is clear: take the car, take the cash — and in return, endorse President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s term extension when the party convenes for its annual conference next month in Mutare.
This is not generosity. It is political insurance.
It is the transactional politics that has scooped out Zimbabwe’s democracy, where loyalty is bought, dissent is punished and public resources are siphoned through private benefactors to entrench power.
Meanwhile, the youth — jobless, landless and increasingly restless — are left with empty promises and ghost empowerment schemes.
Their boos in Chinhoyi at the weekend were not just about broken pledges; they were also about a system that invests more in SUVs for the elite than in livelihoods for ordinary people.
The provincial chairpersons now face an acid test.
They either drive their new vehicles straight into complicity or take a principled stand — though history tells us which way this will go.
The truth is simple: these cars are not just donations.
They are investments in obedience.
They are down payments on loyalty.
And loyalty, in Zanu PF’s politics of patronage, is always expected to be repaid.
This culture of patronage is not just a political problem — it is an economic cancer.
Money that should be invested in jobs, health and education is diverted to buy loyalty.
Contracts are awarded not on merit, but based on connections.
Productive citizens are sidelined while the politically-connected get rich off State resources.
In such an environment, no economy can grow.
Investors look elsewhere, entrepreneurs are suffocated and the cycle of poverty continues.
Patronage explains why Zimbabwe, despite its mineral wealth and fertile soils, continues to sink.
It explains why reforms never take off, why State enterprises remain in the doldrums and why corruption thrives unchecked.
As long as power is built on gifts and loyalty instead of performance and accountability, economic recovery will remain a mirage.
The same pattern plays out in councils and parastatals.
Tender processes are manipulated so that allies of the ruling party get contracts to supply goods and services, often at inflated prices and with substandard delivery.
House allocations in towns and cities are turned into political favours, not urban planning.
State-owned enterprises — once engines of the economy — are reduced to feeding troughs for the politically connected, draining public coffers instead of driving development.
Zimbabwe deserves better than a government that mistakes patronage for policy.