The recent wedding associated with the family of businessman Kudakwashe Tagwirei may go down as one of the defining psychological and political symbols of Zimbabwe’s current era.
Not because people should not celebrate weddings, and not because wealth itself is evil. But because of what the spectacle represented against the backdrop of a collapsing society marked by poverty, unemployment, collapsing public services, and growing hopelessness among ordinary Zimbabweans.
For many citizens, the event felt less like a family celebration and more like a public declaration of power: “We are here. We are rich. We are powerful. We are untouchable.”
And perhaps even more disturbing was the apparent emotional detachment between the extravagance on display and the suffering surrounding it.
Zimbabweans watched scenes of conspicuous consumption while:
• nurses remain underpaid
• graduates roam jobless
• hospitals deteriorate
• teachers struggle
• families survive hand-to-mouth
The emotional contradiction was too large to ignore. The wedding became symbolic of something much larger: the emergence of a politically protected elite culture increasingly disconnected from the emotional reality of ordinary Zimbabweans.
The Rise of the “Zvigananda”
Vice President Constantino Chiwenga reportedly referred to this emerging class using the now popular term “Zvigananda” a phrase increasingly used to describe flashy, politically connected elites associated with extreme displays of wealth and working with the president.
What makes this moment psychologically fascinating is not merely the existence of wealth. It is the style of wealth. The brazenness, the fanfare, the need for spectacle, and the almost compulsive public performance of abundance.
Historically, established elites often learn discretion. Old money tends to understand restraint because power that feels secure rarely needs constant theatrical display. But Zimbabwe’s emerging elite appears different. There is something emotionally loud about the culture:
• luxury cars
• massive handouts
• public gifting
• extravagant parties
• visible domination through money
This suggests something deeper psychologically: not confidence, but insecurity.
When Unmet Needs Distort Human Behaviour
Mental fitness theory offers an important lens here. Human beings are fundamentally driven by needs. Psychologists such as Abraham Maslow and family therapist Virginia Satir demonstrated that unmet human needs profoundly shape behaviour, identity, and emotional functioning.
Needs are not merely physical. Human beings also carry:
• emotional needs
• attachment needs
• belonging needs
• significance needs
• safety needs
• psychospiritual needs
When these needs are threatened or unmet, fear emerges, and beneath fear lies something even deeper: the fear of psychological or physical death.
The Bible captures this symbolically in Genesis when Adam says: “I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.” Nakedness here can be understood psychologically as vulnerability. Clothing is a basic need and its absence brought about fear and hiding.
Exposure.
Lack.
Need.
And fear.
The human nervous system reacts intensely to states of vulnerability because survival itself feels threatened.
Why Excess Often Comes From Fear
This is where many analyses of Zimbabwe’s elite culture fail.
People assume greed comes only from abundance.
But psychologically, excessive accumulation often comes from fear and unresolved deprivation. A person whose nervous system was shaped by:
• insecurity
• humiliation
• scarcity
• instability
• exclusion
may continue operating from survival psychology even after acquiring enormous wealth, because they are externally rich but internally afraid.
This is why:
• accumulation becomes compulsive
• display and show off becomes exaggerated
• compassion weakens
• power becomes emotionally addictive
The nervous system still believes:
“There is not enough.”
“I could lose everything.”
“I am unsafe.”
And so, the person keeps grabbing.
The Poor Nervous System in a Rich Environment
One of the most important insights in this discussion is this: changing a person’s financial condition does not automatically change their nervous system.
Someone can become wealthy while psychologically remaining trapped in survival fear and poverty or at least a poor value system. The same nervous system that operated during poverty may still be operating after wealth arrives and distorting thinking, emotions and actions.
Behaviour in this case is just a tip of the iceberg. This creates what might be called: POOR PSYCHOLOGY INSIDE RICH CIRCUMSTANCES.
The result is often:
• selfishness
• emotional detachment
• inability to regulate desire
• compulsive excess
• obsession with protecting one’s own family circle
This may partly explain why political systems shaped by zvigananda often produce:
• nepotism
• tribalism
• patronage networks
• loyalty politics
• concentration of power within close circles
Because psychologically: opening systems feels dangerous. Sharing power feels unsafe and trusting broader society feels threatening.
The Children of Excess
One particularly tragic dimension of this culture is its effect on children. There is also the daughter of presidential advisor Tinotenda Tungwarara and the public controversies surrounding displays of wealth and gifting culture.
The deeper issue here is developmental. The adolescent brain is still forming:
• identity
• values
• emotional regulation
• moral orientation
• understanding of human worth
When young people are socialized into environments where:
• wealth equals value
• public display equals importance
• poor people become spectators
• human dignity becomes transactional
their developmental process may itself become distorted, and the danger is not merely spoiled children but the danger is intergenerational distortion of values.
The Baboon and the Whistle
The African image of the baboon that finds a whistle and becomes intoxicated by the sound it produces is an interesting metaphor to use to understand the behaviour of the Zvigananda.
The baboon blows uncontrollably:
• excited by attention
• fascinated by noise
• overwhelmed by stimulation
The more others react, the more frantic the performance becomes. This metaphor captures something psychologically important about sudden or insecure wealth: it can produce emotional intoxication where money becomes:
• spectacle
• identity
• stimulation
• social domination
And the individual begins PERFOMING wealth rather than simply living.
The Psychological Danger of Elite Detachment
A society becomes extremely dangerous when elites lose emotional connection with ordinary suffering. History repeatedly shows that when ruling classes:
• normalize inequality
• flaunt excess publicly
• become emotionally insulated
• treat citizens as spectators rather than participants,
mass resentment slowly accumulates beneath the surface and this is why prominent lawyer, Sipho Malunga’s warning is psychologically and politically important: “Predatory politics generates mass grievance.
Mass grievance generates mass anger. Mass anger generates mass mobilization. Always!” Human beings can tolerate suffering for long periods. But humiliation is different because it accumulates emotionally and eventually societies react.
Zimbabwe’s Most Dangerous Problem
Yet perhaps the greatest tragedy right now is not even elite behaviour itself, but may be the paralysis of ordinary citizens where disorganized outrage, fragmented frustration, hopelessness, fear, silence and the sense that: “Nothing can change.”
This is dangerous psychologically because societies collapse internally before they collapse externally. When populations lose:
• moral courage
• collective agency
• emotional clarity
oligarchic systems deepen.
The Mental Fitness Challenge
This is why mental fitness matters profoundly in this moment as Zimbabweans face a difficult challenge of how to resist consciously without becoming consumed by rage, despair, or hatred, because unconscious anger can itself become destructive.
The answer is not passivity but regulated participation. Here the Mental Fitness principle becomes essential: Pause. Return. Choose. Pause before reacting impulsively.
Return to the body rather than being consumed by collective emotional chaos and rage Choose consciously rather than participating unconsciously in cycles of fear, greed, humiliation, and domination.
Final Reflection: Fear Dressed as Luxury
Perhaps the deepest tragedy of Zimbabwe’s emerging elite culture is this: that what appears externally as confidence and success may internally be fear, fear of vulnerability, losing power. Fear of becoming ordinary again.
Fear of exposure. Fear of death itself. And when fear controls wealth and power, society suffers because fear without regulation rarely produces wisdom, restraint, compassion, or justice but produces accumulation, control, excess, and eventually, instability.
Zimbabwe now stands at a dangerous moral and psychological crossroads, and one hopes that before the noise of money, luxury, and political spectacle completely drowns the nation’s conscience, enough Zimbabweans will still find the courage, clarity, and emotional grounding to say:
This is not the direction we want for our collective future.
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