Zimbabwean tycoon Kudakwashe Tagwirei puts $2.7 million into ruling party's Harare push

Zimbabwean fuel and mining tycoon Kudakwashe Tagwirei has made a $2.7 million revolving fund available for empowerment projects run by the ruling ZANU-PF party in Harare, a capital city the party has failed to win for more than two decades.

The first $1.125 million has been deposited with the party's treasurer-general for immediate distribution, and the remaining $1.575 million is due by the end of November. Godwills Masimirembwa, ZANU-PF's chairman for Harare province, confirmed the funding at a provincial coordinating committee meeting in the city on Nov. 8.

Tagwirei, who holds the party post of secretary for economic affairs and investment promotion, has served since October as Zimbabwe's minister of economic development and investment promotion.

Women and youth first

The money will go to income-generating ventures, skills training and access to capital, with women and young people as the main targets. Tagwirei pledged empowerment schemes across all six of the party's zones in Harare and told the meeting the province should aim for at least one million members by 2030. He tied the program to President Emmerson Mnangagwa's slogan of "leaving no one and no place behind" and to the government's Vision 2030 target of upper-middle-income status.

Masimirembwa said the party wants to reclaim every National Assembly and local council seat in Harare, which the opposition has controlled since the early 2000s, and to register eligible voters.

Party supporters have defended the structure of the fund. "The key word is revolving," Dereck Goto, a ZANU-PF online activist, said in a post praising Tagwirei, arguing that money lent, repaid and lent again reaches more people than a one-off donation.

Critics in the Zimbabwean press have questioned how beneficiaries will be chosen and how the money will be accounted for, and say the fund shows cash taking a larger role in the party's internal contests and election campaigns.

Audio arrest

Separately, Batsi Java, a preacher and the brother of self-styled prophet Passion Java, was detained by police in Harare on Nov. 12 over an audio recording about Tagwirei that claimed he had taken over the country's key institutions, Zimbabwean news site ZimEye reported. He was being held at the Criminal Investigation Department's Law and Order section.

From fuel trader to minister

Tagwirei built his fortune through Sakunda Holdings, the fuel trading company he founded in 2005. Sakunda formed Trafigura Zimbabwe with the Swiss commodity trader in 2013 and became central to the country's fuel supply, and mining assets linked to the group were later folded into Kuvimba Mining House, which holds gold, platinum, nickel and lithium interests.

ZANU-PF co-opted him onto its central committee in October 2025, and Mnangagwa appointed him to the Senate this year before naming him to the cabinet. Some party commentators now promote him as a contender to succeed Mnangagwa.

The U.S. Treasury sanctioned Tagwirei in 2020 and again in March 2024 under its Global Magnitsky corruption program, accusing him of using his ties to Mnangagwa to win state contracts. Britain sanctioned him in 2021. He has denied wrongdoing.