When the clown builds a road: Trabablas, Tagwirei and the Theft Interchange

Yes, the Mbudzi Interchange—seized before completion by a looting Cabinet desperate to impress the Clown in the Palace is, by our modest standards, an impressive structure.

It will likely ease Harare’s infamous traffic congestion. And yes, the principle of such infrastructure is sound.

But let us be very clear: this was never about development. It was about theft—structured, syndicated, and sealed with a ribbon.

They call it progress. We call it daylight robbery with traffic lights.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa recently cut a ribbon at what may now be Africa’s most expensive roundabout: the so-called Trabablas Interchange. It stands not as a symbol of modernisation, but as a monument to kleptocracy and elite cannibalism.

As usual, the flags waved, the choir sang, the journalists scribbled, and the nation was once again mugged by its own leaders.

Let’s break it down.

Originally priced at $42 million by a South African contractor—with compensation for affected families included—the project was abruptly taken over by Fossil Contracting, owned by Mnangagwa’s favourite oligarch, Kuda Tagwirei.

Soon after, CBZ Bank, also controlled by Tagwirei, loaned the Zimbabwean government $88 million for the same project. That’s more than double the initial cost. The interest? A juicy 5%—paid by the same taxpayers being fleeced.

It’s not just a loan. It’s a padded laundering operation disguised as development.

Families displaced by the construction were told they’d receive between $100,000 and $500,000. But Fossil officials confiscated 80% of those payouts, claiming it was “overpayment.”

The victims, stunned and powerless, were forced to sign silence agreements—left with 20% and no justice.

If this was not enough of a circus, Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube, the economic sidekick in this comedy of corruption, decided to withdraw $88 million from Zimbabwe’s IMF Special Drawing Rights (SDRs)—a separate pot of public money—and hand it to Fossil again.

Yes, the same project. Paid for twice. Both times with national funds.

He came, he looted, he built a road—and then looted the road.

Mnangagwa is not developing Zimbabwe. He is engineering a cartel economy where every bridge, every highway, every ribbon-cutting ceremony is merely a theatrical backdrop for Treasury looting.

“If clowns ruled the world, Zimbabwe would be their Las Vegas.”
He doesn’t govern. He performs.
He doesn’t serve. He consumes.
He doesn’t build. He extracts.

Mnangagwa is a kleptomaniac in a presidential jacket, unable to see a national resource without turning it into personal loot. His governance model is a grotesque pantomime of public relations and private plunder.

This is no longer about incompetence. It is governance by theft, wrapped in bunting and blessed by the church choir.

A normal government builds roads to connect people.

Ours builds roads to justify looting, inflate debt, and enrich cartels.

And so we are ruled by men who pave roundabouts that go nowhere, while the country itself spirals deeper into the drain.