Last week, controversial Zimbabwean tycoon and tenderpreneur Wicknell Chivayo died with his wife and several members of his entourage in a helicopter crash in his country. His death drew effusive tributes from the presidents of Kenya, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, among others.
These presidents — with whom Chivayo regularly posed for photographs — praised his legacy as that of a “visionary entrepreneur”.
On social media, however, the reactions were very different. Many Zimbabweans didn’t pretend to mourn Chivayo, instead openly celebrating his demise.
Chivayo was a billionaire who appeared to make most of his money through kickbacks from corrupt tenders. He very publicly splashed this cash by buying luxury cars for the political elite in Zimbabwe, often accompanied by $250,000 in “petty cash”.
All this while 60% of Zimbabweans live in poverty, struggle to obtain food and lack access to basic services. Many citizens of the country, commenting on his death, suspected that his billions came from the public funds that should have been directed to those services.
There’s little dispute that Chivayo accessed his wealth through his political connections.
He was deeply enmeshed in networks around President Emmerson Mnangagwa, seemingly leveraging these connections to benefit from public tenders. He had also become involved in the succession battle within Zanu-PF, leading to a public conflict with the vice-president, Constantino Chiwenga.
Controversially, Chivayo was part of Mnangagwa’s delegation that met President Cyril Ramaphosa this year. But his connections with South Africa go much deeper — he had several businesses in the country, where he spent money with abandon, buying a R160m home in Clifton.
The question of where these funds came from is yet to be conclusively answered.
Days before Chivayo’s death, civil society group Open Secrets laid a criminal complaint with the Hawks against him and some of his South African partners. Chivayo’s death does not neatly expunge the need for a full-scale criminal investigation in South Africa to target the allegedly illicit source of his wealth and the network of companies that are believed to have facilitated such enrichment.
The Open Secrets complaint centres on a case typical of Chivayo’s modus operandi. In 2023, the billionaire acted as a middleman for South African printing firm Ren-Form to secure a contract with the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission. A year later, Open Secrets and investigative organisation The Sentry broke the story that the contract had been hugely inflated, possibly to permit the payment of kickbacks to Chivayo and his connections.
South Africa’s Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) immediately launched a probe, and its intelligence report, which was leaked, concluded that a staggering R800m had flowed into Chivayo’s business banking accounts from this deal. This amounted to 80% of the R1bn paid to Ren-Form by the Zimbabwe ministry of finance & economic development.
What’s clear is that the money circulated between Chivayo’s personal and business accounts, with some of it used to buy luxury vehicles. The FIC concluded that it could not rule out “criminal activity”, and urged its counterpart in Zimbabwe to investigate further.
This makes South Africa’s criminal investigation all the more urgent. The assets in his estate — which may be the proceeds of criminal activity — should be secured and preserved pending that investigation to prevent these assets from being dissipated.
Chivayo’s South African asset base is large. This year, a court in the country froze some of it — including several bank accounts and a private jet — as part of divorce proceedings in Zimbabwe. Chivayo claimed that the assets that were subject to that order amounted to R5bn.
A timely question
Chivayo’s activities and assets in South Africa raise awkward questions for the country’s anti-money-laundering architecture.
Why, for instance, was it so easy for Chivayo to use his bank accounts in South Africa to move and spend the proceeds of possibly illicit activities? Why was it so easy for him to buy luxury assets, including the Clifton home, despite the public allegations against him and doubts about where he got the money?
These questions are far from academic: South Africa is in the middle of a midterm Financial Action Task Force (FATF) review, the first since the country’s exit from the greylist a year ago. It was on the greylist precisely because of deficiencies in its ability to identify and prosecute money laundering and terror financing cases.
There is already anxiety about what the FATF will find when it looks at South Africa’s law enforcement agencies this time around.
In June, National Treasury technical adviser Ismail Momoniat warned parliament that this was the weakest area of South Africa’s anti-money-laundering regime. “It is not a secret that the area of law enforcement is one of our biggest challenges, particularly as they relate to financial crime,” Momoniat said.
This is why the Chivayo case is one of significant public importance in both South Africa and Zimbabwe. Besides serious allegations of corruption and money laundering, the possibility that South Africa has in this case been a haven for money siphoned from the public purse of its neighbours is of major public interest.
It is also an opportunity. South Africa’s law enforcement agencies can use this case to show that they are both serious about these types of crimes and equipped to investigate and prosecute them fully. Let’s see if they meet the challenge.
Marchant is head of investigations for Open Secrets