MY first encounter with Mutumwa Mawere remains vivid and deeply personal.
At the time, I was an investment analyst at Barbican Asset Management, where we ran a column in The Independent titled Taking Stock with Barbican.
In October 1998, I authored an article on Africa Resources Limited (ARL) in which I raised several issues, including the fact that the majority shareholder was the Government of Zimbabwe.
The article caught Mutumwa’s attention immediately.
He demanded that I come and see him, together with his then CEO, Passmore Matupire.
I approached our then managing director, Mthuli Ncube, who is now Finance minister, advised him of the impending meeting and we attended together.
That meeting marked the beginning of a friendship rooted in robust debate, mutual respect and a shared belief in Zimbabwe’s economic potential.
Today, Mawere is gone. He died in exile.
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For many Zimbabweans, this is more than just the passing of a prominent businessman.
It is a moment of national sadness and reflection.
Why did a man who embodied post-independence African enterprise, intellect and ambition have to spend his final years outside the country he believed in so deeply?
Zimbabweans went to war to reclaim dignity, land, opportunity and sovereignty.
Independence was meant to ensure that Zimbabweans would never again be strangers in their own land, never again forced into exile by unjust systems.
And yet, decades later, one of the country’s most gifted entrepreneurs died away from home.
Mawere was not an ordinary businessman.
He was intellectually formidable, globally exposed and unapologetically African in his vision.
He built companies that created jobs, expanded industrial capacity and placed Zimbabwe on the continental business map.
His success should have been celebrated as a victory of independence, a demonstration of what Zimbabweans could achieve when given space to innovate and compete.
Instead, his story became one of prolonged legal battles, State intervention, asset seizures and eventual exile.
Whatever one’s view of the disputes surrounding his businesses, a painful question remains unanswered: Why did the system fail to resolve its differences with him in a way that allowed him to remain home, productive and protected as a citizen?
Exile is not just physical separation.
It is emotional dislocation.
It is the slow erosion of belonging.
No Zimbabwean, especially one who invested so much intellectual and financial capital into the country, should deserve such an experience.
Mawere’s death forces us to confront uncomfortable truths.
Did independence fully deliver economic freedom for all Zimbabweans?
Are our institutions strong enough to manage disagreement without destroying lives and legacies?
And how many other brilliant minds have we lost not to death, but to silence, distance and disillusionment?
This is not merely about Mutumwa Mawere.
It is about Zimbabwe.
As tributes pour in, they must not stop at praise.
They must also provoke introspection.
A nation that fought so hard for independence must ask itself why one of its sons died far from home and what must change so that no other Zimbabwean of his calibre meets the same fate.
Mawere’s life was complex.
His legacy is contested.
But his death in exile is a tragedy that should never happen to any Zimbabwean — black or white.
May he rest in eternal peace.
And may Zimbabwe find the courage to learn from his story or has our nation lost its soul.
