By Political Editor
Political Opinion — As the old adage goes, “politics is a dirty game,” and those with the dirtiest hands are often the first to manoeuvre, deploying sponsored political pawns to launder their tarnished images and deflect scrutiny away from themselves.
It is usually a sign not of strength, but of diminishing relevance.
That is precisely what unfolded when Special Presidential Adviser Paul Tungwarara dared to question an unnamed businessman widely perceived by some sections of the public as Kudakwashe Tagwirei.
Tungwarara questioned the unnamed business mogul’s growing sense of entitlement and his barely concealed belief that presidential succession is a birthright rather than a disciplined political process rooted in ideology, struggle and structure.
The response was swift, and smear campaigns followed.
Online outrage was choreographed.
The objective was simple, it was to drown out Tungwarara’s dissenting voice before it gathered momentum and forced attention onto the real centres of power he was exposing.
Tagwirei sympathisers, assuming the critique was directed at him, rushed to the barricades.
That reflex alone was telling, as they branded Tungwarara a factionalist.
They called him reckless, and some went as far as branding him a “political nuisance.”
But beneath the noise lies an inconvenient truth.
Tungwarara touched a nerve not because he allegedly attacked a powerful figure, but because he exposed how inflated political entitlement has become when propped up by money rather than mandate.
He questioned the creeping normalisation of wealth dictating political destiny inside Zanu PF.
To some, this was unforgivable.
It even provoked a curious spectacle in which clergymen, themselves no strangers to controversy, issued cryptic prophecies — attempting to dress political discomfort as divine outrage.
This is, of course, quite the opposite.
Tungwarara’s speeches, though raw and unfiltered, are not reckless.
They are deliberate and they carry urgency rather than arrogance.
They are a call for unity, and an unapologetic reminder that Zanu PF is a mass party, not a shareholders’ club where capital substitutes ideology.
He speaks of unity within the rank and file.
Across class, race and province.
He argues for empowerment that is broad, deliberate and unapologetically inclusive.
No shortcuts, no sacred cows snd no untouchables.
Tagwirei’s rise within Zanu PF, on the other hand, has never been ideological.
His co-option into the central committee
unsettled many not because it was bold, but because it felt transactional.
To many within the party, it symbolised the blurring of ideology and capital, and the creeping belief that access alone equals political worth.
A businessman stepping into the party’s strategic nerve centre without the traditional grind did not signal renewal.
It signalled impatience.
Some party insiders registered discomfort while his backers applauded loudly.
Critics pushed back.
Fake accounts surfaced and narratives collided.
Politics turned noisy, but also exposed how thin the political substance really was.
The controversies are well known.
Sakunda Holdings has long attracted scrutiny, beginning with Parliament’s 2018 standoff over the financing of Command Agriculture.
Lawmakers demanded transparency.
Records were questioned and oversight was resisted.
By 2021, investigations expanded to the energy sector, probing how Sakunda secured a multi-million-dollar power project without competitive bidding.
Auditor-General reports pointed to allocations running into billions.
Calls for forensic audits followed.
Supporters cited output and critics cited opacity.
Both arguments have circulated for years.
What has changed is not the debate, but the fatigue.
Tagwirei’s business footprint is deeply interwoven with the state.
That reality is no longer shocking.
It is simply familiar, and increasingly unpersuasive as a basis for political ascendancy.
This is where Zanu PF spokesperson Christopher Mutsvangwa enters the frame.
And this is not personal.
Mutsvangwa’s resistance to money-driven politics is longstanding.
His rebuke was not impulsive.
It was consistent.
He warned against leapfrogging party structures.
He rejected the idea that legitimacy can be purchased.
He reminded aspirants that Zanu PF is built from the ground up, not imposed from boardrooms.
There is also the uncomfortable irony few wish to confront.
Zanu PF created the political and economic environment that allowed Tagwirei to thrive.
Access, contracts, and political proximity, all of it mattered, and the ruling party opened the door.
Wealth followed, however, some critics now argue that what began as opportunity has morphed into an incorrigible appetite.
That success has bred wild unchecked ambition.
Currently there is a belief within the ruling party that a vulgar, unchecked ambition has emerged, which now seeks to capture and monopolise the same system that enabled it.
Tungwarara’s critics conveniently ignore this context.
Instead, they reach for lazy comparisons.
They call him the “second coming of Grace Mugabe.”
It is a tired tactic and a feeble attempt to subtly coerce the simpler minds.
Tungwarara’s bold, unfiltered speeches have flipped the script, exposing a deep-rooted shadowy cartel that has erected parallel structures and feeds off public resources.
Perhaps his remarks, unsettling as they are, are simply dismantling an entrenched ecosystem that has grown too comfortable and too powerful and perhaps now a security threat.
Designed to provoke fear, and discrediting without debating substance.
That is to avoid the pertinent question who is benefiting when money speaks louder than ideology?
Through the Presidential Empowerment Programme, resources have reached all ten provinces.
That matters. It reflects Zanu PF’s redistributive instinct.
But Tungwarara warns that empowerment must remain people-centred.
Not personality-centred.
Transparent, accountable and broad, leaving no one behind.
Otherwise, it risks becoming symbolism without substance.
This is not a personal feud.
It is a political reckoning.
A contest between entitlement and accountability.
Between accumulation and ideology.
Between silence and scrutiny.
Tungwarara’s defiance resonates because it is not loud for attention.
It is loud because it refuses to whisper around power in the midst of legions of bootlickers.
In Zanu PF’s internal theatre, the real drama is not who is silent but who is offended and afraid.
Afraid and offended that the grassroots are listening.
Offended and afraid that the questions will not go away.
Afraid that unity, when demanded from below, cannot be bought from above.