Tendai Ruben Mbofana
I have just watched yet another video doing the rounds on social media—a scene that has become depressingly familiar in today’s Zimbabwe.
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Once again, a Zimbabwean reduced herself to a spectacle before the entire nation and the world, begging convicted criminal and notorious tenderpreneur Wicknell Chivayo for a car.
In this latest display of national embarrassment, a nurse is seen kneeling in what she claims to be a prayer, asking God to bless Chivayo and to bless her, too, with a Toyota Fortuner GD6 this Christmas.
She supplicates herself as though Chivayo were a benevolent deity dispensing miracles from the heavens rather than a man who has helped sink this country deeper into poverty.
What pained me the most was not merely the personal indignity of her conduct.
It was that she was a nurse.
As the son of a nurse, I have grown up with profound respect—reverence even—for this noble profession.
Nurses were people of integrity, discipline, quiet courage, and fierce work ethic.
My late mother embodied these virtues in full.
She carried herself with dignity everywhere she went.
She worked hard, stood tall, and provided for her family without ever grovelling before anyone.
I never once saw her degrade herself.
If anything, it was others who came to her for help.
Even though I was an only child, it never felt like it, because my mother lovingly took care of several relatives.
She worked hard, carried herself with dignity, and ensured I never lacked anything essential—without ever stooping to begging or self-degradation.
So when I watch a nurse today kneeling for a man like Chivayo, my heart breaks—not only for her, but for the erosion of dignity that Zimbabwe has undergone.
I know she is just one rotten apple in a crate filled with many decent, hardworking healthcare professionals.
But one thing is certain: my mother would be turning in her grave to see the profession she loved reduced to a circus act performed for criminals and political charlatans.
Yet what troubles me even more is that this nurse, and so many others who demean themselves in similar ways, do not seem to understand why they have been reduced to beggars in the first place.
They fail to connect their own suffering to the very people they are praising.
They cannot see that the reason they cannot afford their own good car—as my parents could in their day—is because the same individuals they glorify have looted the country dry.
I grew up in a home where both my parents—a nurse and a teacher—earned modest but decent salaries.
We lived a relatively comfortable life.
My mother bought her own modest, beautiful house in the low-density suburbs of Redcliff.
My late father did the same in Masasa Park in Kwekwe.
My mother bought several cars over the decades—from the 1970s until her retirement in 2010.
There was no begging, no kneeling, no humiliating public performances to attract the attention of politically connected businessmen.
She simply worked, earned, saved, and purchased what she needed.
Today’s generation of public servants cannot even dream of that.
This is what is most tragic: the very man this nurse is praying to is one of the reasons she can’t buy her own car.
Zimbabweans have been reduced to paupers by unprecedented levels of corruption—where people like Wicknell Chivayo are awarded multi-million-dollar government contracts, many without clear tender processes, often at grotesquely inflated costs, sometimes for projects that never materialise at all.
Has this nurse ever stopped to ask herself why her employer—the government—claims it cannot pay her a living wage, yet can give Chivayo over US$5 million in advance for a solar power project that never materialised?
Has she ever asked why Chivayo received a staggering R800 million (about US$40 million) from a R1.1 billion payment made to South African company Ren-Form CC for Zimbabwe’s election materials?
Does she not see that these are the very funds that should have been paying nurses, teachers, doctors, and civil servants decent wages?
Does she not see that the reason her hospital lacks essential equipment and medicines is because people like Chivayo siphon off public money through opaque and corrupt deals?
What makes this video even more gut-wrenching is that, in her ‘prayer,’ the nurse found the audacity to castigate lawyer and opposition figure Fadzayi Mahere—simply because Mahere has been at the forefront of demanding accountability from Chivayo.
The nurse somehow perceives Mahere as the enemy.
She believes Mahere’s efforts should “come to nothing.”
She prays that Mahere should be punished by God.
Why?
Because she is challenging the very corruption that impoverishes this nurse and millions of others.
This is how distorted our national moral compass has become.
Zimbabweans have been so beaten down by poverty and hopelessness that they now view handouts as normal and the fight for justice as subversive.
They now see the people who have stolen entire cows from the nation returning with a small piece of liver—and call them philanthropists.
They treat individuals who loot public resources as generous benefactors.
They heap praises on those who robbed them blind.
Meanwhile, they vilify those fighting for their dignity, their livelihoods, and their rights.
It is not simply that the nation has become poor.
It is that we have become accustomed to poverty—to the point of defending those who cause it.
It is that we have become so desperate that we now interpret exploitation as benevolence.
And it is that we have become so morally disoriented that we now kneel before thieves while cursing those who challenge the theft.
How did we sink this low as a nation?
At what point did we transition from the dignity of our mothers—women who stood tall, worked hard, and lifted others up—to the shamelessness of a generation that kneels before the very people who destroyed their futures?
This is not simply an economic collapse.
It is an ethical collapse.
A collapse of national pride, national self-worth, and national consciousness.
It is what happens when a society is worn down for decades by corruption, patronage, propaganda, and despair.
It is what happens when people lose hope in institutions, in justice, and in the possibility of change.
They cling instead to whoever throws them crumbs.
They exalt the hand that feeds them scraps from a feast stolen from the public.
And yet, the saddest truth is this: Zimbabweans do not have to live like this.
Nurses do not have to kneel.
Teachers do not have to beg.
Civil servants do not have to exist on handouts.
We were once a dignified people.
We can be again.
But only if we stop worshipping those who have made us beggars—and start demanding accountability from them.
Until then, videos like the one I watched will continue to surface, each one a painful reminder of just how far our nation has fallen, and how much we must fight to restore the dignity we once took for granted.
- Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to WhatsApp or Call: +263715667700 | +263782283975, or email: mbofana.tendairuben73@gmail.com, or visit website: https://mbofanatendairuben.news.blog/
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