Chivayo, Ruto and the porous boundaries of power

The passing of President William Ruto’s bosom friend, Wicknell Chivayo of Zimbabwe, invites us  to reflect on the persistence of the unforeseen and the absurdity of our well-laid plans. But it is also an invitation to reflect on the exercise of power in the African State, where informal networks are often more consequential than formal institutions.

Chivayo, a Harare jailbird and billionaire, was a highly respected wheeler-dealer in African palaces; from Pretoria to Nairobi, and from Dar-es-Salaam to Abuja. He was a high-priority guest in many other high places in Africa. He cherished flaunting images of his hobnobbing with African royalty in exclusive sessions. He may just be luxuriating lackadaisically in President Ruto’s office, or he may be taking a ride in a high-end Mercedes Maybach, on one of the president’s estates, with Dr Ruto himself behind the wheel.

His languid presence before the president, and his selfies that brag loudly on camera about his Super-VVIP chauffeur, both speak to a beyond-the-elbow collegiality that goes with mutual benefits. Ruto nostalgically eulogized Chivayo online, “I will remember him for his friendship, his energy, and deep conviction in African possibilities.”

Beyond the grief are difficult questions about how an individual with a dubious background and gross character burst powered his way into personal billions of dollars, and with them access to presidential palaces, where he tete-a-tete with heads of state with prime insouciance.

He is casually attired, his legs irreverently spread-eagled before his host. He cuts the image of an absentee Spanish landlord on the rare visit to one of his haciendas in South America, chatting away with his faithful farm manager. How did we even get here? How did Chivayo become Ruto’s bosom friend, and what benefits accrue to either party out of the friendship?

When Ruto was making his first improbable gambits towards Kenya’s presidency in 2006–2007, Chivayo was a 24-year-old youth, recently graduated from prison. Believed to have dropped out of school owing to financial challenges in the family, he possibly had only his prison jail term certificate, to show for the energies President Ruto will remember him for. His only other certificates were possibly a certificate of birth, and a baptismal certificate.

Such is the Individual who hobnobs with Kenya’s Number One, with the Big Man himself behind the wheel. Where did they meet? How did he cross all the safety, diplomatic and security barricades around the president to become his crony? But it is not just President Ruto who has been Chivayo’s crony. The nectar that attracts the African president to people like Chivayo resides in the appetite for the porous informal State.

Social science recognizes informal government as creation of power structures that parallel and outcompete legal and constitutional structures. Harare media sources indicate that Chivayo broke through financially with a USD 183 million tender award to construct a 100 megawatt solar station, with USD 1.2 million paid as a deposit.  He, however, did not do the job. He instead paid USD 10,000 to the chairperson of the power company, Mr.  Stanley Kazhanje, who then went on to be jailed.

The rest is so much water under the bridge, and so much history that has seen the ex-convict morph into a dollar multibillionaire, and a peerless philanthropist, who contributes mostly to who’s who, and to friends of political establishments. But who would be a better individual to act as an intermediary in business deals for African strongmen?

President Ruto made a State visit to Zimbabwe in April 2024. He was reported to have discussed bilateral and continental matters with his host, Emmerson Mnangagwa. Other reciprocal visits and interactions followed, where peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo featured prominently. The first documented meeting between President Ruto and his fallen friend was in January 2025, when the Zimbabwean businessman paid a courtesy visit to the Kenyan head of State and Government.

The two were reported to have discussed possibilities of renewable energy for Kenya. In more recent times, Chivayo has been featured in controversial discourses regarding possible expansion of the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. A company believed to be closely associated with the late Zimbabwean influence magnate was alleged to have been  awarded a contract on the quiet to expand the airport, an allegation that Transport and Communication CS, Davis Chirchir, has since dismissed as false. Chivayo was also prominently present at a Ruto family event at the president’s Kilgoris country residence.

What the catalogue of engagements leads to is the simple question, what has been cooking? And why has Chivayo usually found it necessary to post images of the encounters, with laudatory superlatives, on President Ruto? From a public communications perspective, Chivayo’s images have  been telling the world that he knows people. But he has also been saying more than just that. The critical message is this, “I can pull strings.”

When Chivayo has shown Ruto driving him around his farm, the message has been simple. The audience has been defined as “whomever it may concern.” And he has been telling them through those images, “You want to talk to him? Get into my inbox. Terms and conditions apply.” 

This way, Chivayo was good for the inner Kenyan State. He did for it what the Minister may want to do, but not want to be known. Such things are also what the centre of power wants to be done, but with high deniability. In such situations, the State itself becomes porous enough to be accessed by individuals like Chivayo, but impervious enough to lock out everyone with no immediate interest in the matter at hand.

This way, the State becomes porous. The boundary between the State and the intermediary is also porous. And porous boundaries make for easy deniability and difficult accountability. Ambiguity is the biggest asset in this relationship. When the mess hits the fan, the State will simply deny. There are no records, no minutes, no nothing. It’s also false. The intermediary, meanwhile, embraces ambiguity. He neither explains nor denies. Ambiguity is his biggest asset.

But a Chivayo will not just be in Dar-es-Salaam or Kampala to conduct personal business with the president. No, to the contrary, he is only someone else’s errand boy. For, first there is the president, behind the president are networks, and behind the networks are brokers. There are financiers and corporations. There are foreign governments with their strategic interests, both at personal and official levels. When they have found a Chivayo, they sit back and conduct business.

That was what Africa learned right from the decades of independence, when two of the foremost brokers were Adnan Khashoggi, and Bob Denard. Denard was an individual of a kind, in the first decades of independence in Africa. In his time, he was described as the informal French voice in Africa.

A former soldier, Denard arrived in Africa in an age when Europeans could suddenly land in a country, armed with guns and allied stuff. They would capture the radio station (it was mostly radio, many of the countries where these things happened had no TV). They would then round up the presidential palace and go on to change the government, just like that.

The Comoros remains a textbook case. Denard was the unofficial president of the Comoros at some point. He conducted at least four coups des tats over a twenty-year period, having positioned himself as the head of the presidential guard. There was always cause to believe that Paris was happy with his unofficial command of the East African archipelago, which he also used as a launching pad for mercenary mischief elsewhere on the continent.

Denard overthrew the first president of the Comoros in 1975. Ahmed Abdallah was replaced by Ali Soilih. Three years later (1978), he deposed Soilih, because he had gone against French wishes. Strangely, he reinstated Abdallah. Abdallah lasted until 1989, when Denard assassinated him and installed Said Mohamed Djohar. By 1995, Denard had grown too big for his boots, such that when he attempted to depose Djohar, the French Government removed him instead. They returned him to Paris, where they played legalistic softball with him over his offensives against The Comoros. They slapped him on the wrist and allowed him to go into mental degeneration till his death in 2007.

Such are the extremes that informal intermediaries are capable of. In Kenya, Adnan Khashoggi was cited in the infamous Traitor affair of the early 1980s, where former Attorney General (later Minister for Constitutional Affairs) Charles Njonjo, was accused of plotting to overthrow the Moi government. Through his access to Njonjo, Khashoggi was reputed to privately jet himself into Kenya with no need for immigration processes. He flew in and out of the country at will.

Unlike Chivayo, Khashoggi was a scion of Saudi royalty. His father Muhamad Khashoggi was the personal doctor to the King Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia. This gave the younger Khashoggi access to the Saudi palace and to global notables and grandees, who visited the king. He cultivated personal networks that opened doors across the world. In Kenya, the Miller Commission of Inquiry into the Njonjo Affair, heard, Khashoggi had put up the luxurious Ol Pajeta ranch, where he lived lavishly. He brought into the country fellow rich people, without them needing to check with customs or immigration.

The Miller Commission heard that Khashoggi had brought into Kenya illegal firearms, which were intended for removal of Moi from power.  The impact of the Njonjo downfall on foreign business in Kenya is a matter that may require expert investigation, possibly at a scholarly level. For Khashoggi, however, he saw the signs and took off early, leaving behind his massive property that was sold afterwards.

It will be interesting to know if Chivayo had any property in Kenya. Of course he was cut off a different cloth, possibly even of inferior texture to both Denard and Khashoggi. But there he was, making inroads into the country, with patronage from the very top. It should not surprise that he was already in business, in Kenya and in the Great Lakes region, all the way to the lucrative DRC and its immense possibilities for Africans at the very top of the hierarchy.

Away from palace intrigues and high level transnational machinations is the simple matter of the persistence of the unforeseen. Wisemen have never ceased wondering about the large part of a man’s life that is determined by pure chance. No matter how much we plan and seek to be in control, there is always what Thomas Hardy has called “the waggery of fate” which deals with us in strange ways.

The stubborn hand of fate lays to waste and permanent rest the very finest of our plans, never to rise again. It reminds us of the futility of life itself, and the brevity of our earthly pilgrimage. If only we knew how to ask Fate to give us this day our daily bread, the world would probably be a much richer and propitious space for all.

The lives and times of those who excel in primitive accumulation in its numerous guises remind us of the inevitability of  mortality, and the futility of rapacity. It is mostly food for thought, for those who have cavorted with the rapacious; and especially those whom you look at and you can say, “This one has truly eaten.” Then there are those who scream and shout in public spaces every day, because we stand in the way, between their insatiable appetites and the extravagant power and more wealth that they crave. It is all only for a season.

If the departed Wicknell Chivayo had been my friend, and a bosom friend at that, such would be the things for me to reflect on; and above all, the brevity of life. I would shout and scream less, listen and reflect more, and try to lead better.

Dr Muluka consults in politics and communication strategy