THERE comes a moment in every nation’s tortured journey when honesty becomes the last act of patriotism. Zimbabwe has reached that moment.
We have spoken about corruption, patronage, incompetence and misrule for decades. But we have tiptoed around the core cancer eating our country from the inside — the rise of a parasitic bourgeoisie, a predatory elite that feeds on the state and leaves nothing but bones for the rest of us.
These are not entrepreneurs. They are not builders of industry. They are not innovators. They are tenderpreneurs — merchants of political access, specialists in siphoning, gatekeepers of poverty — a class of rent-seekers who have perfected the art of extracting wealth without producing value. They do not grow the economy; they drain it. They survive not because they are productive, but because they have attached themselves to the arteries of the state like leeches, sucking the life-blood of national resources meant for the public good.
And we must call them what they truly are: the parasitic bourgeoisie of our time.
Across the world, nations rise when public resources are invested in education, healthcare, infrastructure and productive industries. But nations collapse when resources meant for the many are looted by the few. Zimbabwe sits sorrowfully in the latter category.
For years, tenders have not been instruments of development — they have been weapons of extraction. Contracts are awarded not to the best bidder, but to the best-connected. Prices are inflated not because goods cost more, but because greed is bottomless.
Front companies — often registered days before — win multi-million-dollar deals, deliver shoddy work, or nothing at all, and vanish while children study under trees and hospitals run without bandages. This is not mismanagement. This is not inefficiency. This is structural, deliberate, well-oiled theft.
While the rest of us queue for fuel, medicine, school fees and opportunities, tenderpreneurs queue only at State House and in ministries — because in Zimbabwe, proximity to power has replaced innovation, and loyalty to political patrons has replaced competence.
Every inflated invoice is a stolen classroom. Every ghost contract is a stolen drug in a clinic. Every tender awarded to a briefcase company is a stolen road, a stolen job, a stolen future.
The tenderpreneur grows fat because the nation is kept hungry. The elite import Italian marble while rural women give birth by candlelight. A few well-connected individuals build mansions worth millions, while pensioners count coins to buy a loaf of bread.
And when we ask for accountability, we are told we are “politicising things.” When we demand explanations, we are told it is “national security.” When we question suspicious contracts, we are told we are “undermining indigenous empowerment.”
Let it be clear: There is nothing empowering about a thief wearing black skin. There is nothing patriotic about looting from your own people. Real empowerment builds. Parasitic bourgeoisie destroy.
Zimbabwe is today a textbook study in state capture. The same small circle that wins tenders shapes policy. The same actors who manipulate procurement influence legislation. The same individuals who siphon public wealth use it to buy political protection.
This capture does not merely slow the economy — it chokes it. Honest companies are crowded out. Foreign investors flee because rules are unpredictable. Domestic innovators lose hope because merit means nothing. Institutions weaken because they must serve patrons, not the public.
We have allowed a criminal ecosystem to harden into an economic structure. It is why the economy refuses to grow, why corruption repeats itself with impunity, why the poor remain trapped, and why the elite remain untouchable.
The tenderpreneurs do not fear the law — they own the law. They do not fear exposure — they control the narrative. They do not build the nation — they burn its prospects for their luxury.
This is not merely an economic issue. It is an ethical catastrophe. The parasitic bourgeoisie has turned poverty into a business model and national suffering into a profit stream. And yet, the country continues as if this is normal. It is not normal. It is not sustainable. It is not acceptable.
No society can survive when those who should protect the national purse plunder it. No children can dream when their future is being auctioned off through opaque tenders. No nation can grow when its most powerful men and women are skilled not in industry but in extraction.
Zimbabwe is bleeding. And the bleeding is not accidental — it is engineered.
We must stop romanticising theft. We must stop normalising mediocrity. We must stop celebrating looters disguised as businessmen. The fight against the parasitic bourgeoisie is not just a fight for clean governance — it is a fight for economic liberation.
It is a struggle to reclaim the state from those who have taken it hostage. It is a struggle to restore dignity to the taxpayer. It is a struggle to build a future where opportunity is not determined by who you know, but by what you can do.
The time for half-measures is over. We must confront this system with honesty, courage and unrelenting conviction. For if we do not, we will inherit a Zimbabwe with roads that collapse after three weeks, hospitals emptied by procurement scams, and schools that break our children before they build them — a country where a few live like gods while the many live like beggars in their own land.
History will judge this generation harshly if we allow the parasitic bourgeoisie to define our destiny. Zimbabwe cannot rise while predators sit at the core of its state. Our economic liberation will not come from speeches or slogans — it will come from dismantling the networks of patronage that have captured our future.
We must be the generation that says: Enough! No more theft disguised as empowerment. No more tenders that enrich the few and impoverish the many. No more worshipping tenderpreneurs whose only talent is looting.
The soul of Zimbabwe is at stake — and it is time to fight for it.
Gifford Mehluli Sibanda is a political commentator
The post The parasitic bourgeoisie is strangling Zimbabwe, and we must name it appeared first on Zimbabwe News Now.