Reason with Wafawarova: “Enjoy Your Business”: Taurai Kandishaya and the Mafia Politics of Silence
From Question to Threat: How Mutarisi Asked, and Kandishaya answered
In any functioning democracy, a citizen asking a question of government is an act of civic engagement. In Zimbabwe, it is an invitation to be threatened.
Businessman and philanthropist Tinashe Mutarisi recently posted a respectful request on Facebook. He wanted clarity on the logic and personnel behind a new policy initiative.
He was not foaming at the mouth, not issuing ultimatums, not rallying mobs to the streets. He asked, calmly and reasonably, for names and ranks so that the public could engage and decide as a country on the way forward.
It was a textbook example of constructive citizenship.
Enter Taurai Kandishaya. A ZANU PF apparatchik whose fame rests not on ideas or innovation, but on his uncanny ability to bark louder than the rest of the pack.
His response to Mutarisi was not an explanation, not a rebuttal, not even a cliché about “sovereignty” or “Western puppets.” No, it was a threat dressed in the tone of a mafia don.
“Kana une business usatituke Mandebvu. Enjoy your business.”
Translated: If you have a business, don’t insult us you bearded one. Enjoy your business.
This was not advice. It was a warning. In the lexicon of Zimbabwean politics, “enjoy your business” means: we can take it away anytime.
Enter the Loudhailer: Kandishaya, Tagwirei’s Street-Level Franchise
Kandishaya is not a random troll with too much data. He is a political loudhailer, a shock trooper in ZANU PF’s informal machinery of intimidation.
But most importantly, he is financially tethered to Kudakwashe Tagwirei, the fuel baron whose looted billions from Command Agriculture have transformed him into Zimbabwe’s unelected Prime Minister of Capture.
When Tagwirei sneezes, Kandishaya coughs on Facebook. When Tagwirei wants someone silenced, Kandishaya bellows. The relationship is simple: money oils the megaphone, and the megaphone protects the money.
This is how Zimbabwe is governed today. Not through institutions, not through debate, not even through lawfare anymore. The regime has subcontracted repression to loyalists-for-hire who act as neighborhood enforcers of silence.
Like mafia “soldiers,” they remind everyone that politics is not an arena for participation but a minefield where one wrong word can blow up your life, your career, or your business.
A Mafia State by Another Name
Let us not be coy. Kandishaya’s threat was mafia talk. It was a digital version of the horse head in the bed. A simple message: Stay out of politics, or we’ll destroy you.
The state has been hollowed into a racket. Politicians are no longer leaders but godfathers; businessmen are not entrepreneurs but tributaries; activists are not citizens but enemies of the family. In this racket, you do not succeed by merit, you survive by compliance.
This is why Tagwirei’s billions can buy not just influence but silence. His apparatchiks are deployed like mafia soldiers, policing dissent and reminding successful Zimbabweans that prosperity is conditional: you can thrive, but only if you shut up.
The Death of Policy, The Rise of Threats
Once upon a time, ZANU PF at least attempted to justify its decisions with policy rhetoric — sovereignty, indigenisation, sanctions, empowerment. The party churned out slogans and white papers. Today, it has dispensed with even the pretence of explanation.
Why argue when you can threaten? Why debate when you can intimidate? Why convince when you can coerce?
Mutarisi asked for the names of the team behind a government initiative. In a functioning system, the spokesperson of the ministry would have gladly listed the officials. In Zimbabwe’s mafia state, the answer came not from a minister but from a party bulldog: “Enjoy your business.”
It is the ultimate confession that the country is no longer governed through legitimacy or persuasion. It is governed through fear.
Didn’t His Excellency – the President himself recently come out publicly hunting through the CIO, for someone who posted that he is interested in the 2030 term extension – and in that hunt, telling us all that he wants that person punished at no less than Level 14 – 20 years jail minimum?
Business in Zimbabwe: Grow Big, But Don’t Speak
The irony of Zimbabwe’s economic landscape is that business is both courted and crushed. Politicians beg entrepreneurs to invest, donate, and bankroll party activities. Yet the moment a businessperson dares to question, critique, or even gently probe the state, they are told to “stay in their lane.”
Grow as big as you like, but do not speak. Build factories, employ thousands, pay taxes, sponsor football clubs, fund national events — but do not, under any circumstances, ask why the state is run like a family tuckshop.
It is a perverse deal: businessmen are free to make money, as long as they never use their voice. The cost of speech is the loss of livelihood. The price of dissent is total annihilation.
Mutarisi, by daring to ask, crossed that invisible line. And Kandishaya’s job was to remind him that in Zimbabwe, the line is patrolled not by laws or courts, but by thugs in party regalia financed by oligarchs.
When “Enjoy Your Business” Becomes a Death Sentence
We must not trivialise Kandishaya’s words. In countries where the mafia thrives, such coded threats often precede real destruction. “Enjoy your business” is not a figure of speech — it is a death sentence with flexible execution dates.
History is littered with examples of entrepreneurs who lost contracts, properties, or even their lives for daring to challenge Zimbabwe’s ruling elite.
The methods vary: tax raids, revoked licences, arson, unexplained accidents, mysterious fires. What unites them is the message: business is conditional upon obedience.
Kandishaya is not innovating; he is recycling a script older than independence. Only the actors have changed. Once it was CIO operatives whispering in dark corners. Today it is Facebook warriors shouting in broad daylight.
The Silence Tax: What Zimbabweans Pay for Survival
Every Zimbabwean pays a silence tax. For the ordinary worker, it is the fear of losing a job for posting the wrong meme. For artists, it is self-censorship disguised as patriotism. For businesspeople, it is the constant reminder that their assets are on loan from the party, revocable at the first sign of dissent.
This silence tax is invisible but heavy. It stifles innovation, kills initiative, and locks the country in mediocrity. Nations progress when citizens are free to question, criticise, and demand better.
Zimbabwe regresses because questions are treated as insults and answers are delivered as threats.
Mutarisi’s case exposes the silence tax in its rawest form. His “crime” was to ask for transparency. His punishment was a digital horse head: “Enjoy your business.”
The Comical, the Tragic, and the Future
There is a tragicomedy in all this. Kandishaya, a man with no known business empire, no industrial innovation, no economic footprint beyond slogans, threatening a man who has built one of the country’s largest brands.
It is the absurdity of beggars dictating to breadwinners, of slogans bullying substance.
But tragedy lurks beneath the comedy. For as long as Zimbabwe’s business leaders can be threatened into silence, the country will never attract the kind of investment it desperately needs.
No serious investor puts money in a place where questions are punished, and livelihoods are conditional.
The future, then, depends not on the loudhailers of ZANU PF, but on whether citizens — business leaders, workers, artists, professionals — collectively refuse to be silenced.
Kandishaya’s words should not be seen merely as an attack on Mutarisi, but as a warning shot aimed at every Zimbabwean with something to lose.
If “enjoy your business” becomes the national motto, then Zimbabwe has already surrendered to mafia politics. But if citizens answer back — not with threats, but with louder questions, persistent demands, and unyielding defiance — then perhaps the loudhailers will one day run out of batteries.
Final Word
Mutarisi asked a question. Kandishaya gave an answer. Between the two lies the entire story of Zimbabwe’s broken politics.
One man believes in dialogue, explanation, and consensus. The other believes in threats, intimidation, and silence. One builds businesses, the other demolishes voices. One reflects the future Zimbabwe needs, the other embodies the past Zimbabwe must outgrow.
The choice is stark. Will Zimbabwe be a country where citizens can “enjoy their business” in peace, or will it remain a mafia state where “enjoy your business” is code for shut up or lose it all?
The answer will not come from Kandishaya. It will come from the rest of us.
