Few patterns are as consistent and as lethal as the fate of the kingmaker in the unforgiving theatre of Zimbabwean politics. Again and again, the men who build power end up buried beneath it.
The parallel trajectories of Robert Mugabe and Solomon Mujuru, and now Emmerson Mnangagwa and Constantino Chiwenga, expose this political law with chilling clarity.
Mujuru, known in the liberation struggle as Rex Nhongo, was not merely a commander. He was the bridge between the gun and the politician. During the 1970s war, he persuaded hardened guerrilla fighters to accept Mugabe, an intellectual in exile, as the movement’s leader.
That act alone reshaped Zimbabwe’s history. For decades thereafter, Mujuru remained a shadow sovereign. He influenced factions, checked Mugabe in private and ultimately engineered the rise of his wife, Joice Mujuru, to the vice presidency in 2004.
Yet power has a long memory and a short tolerance for rivals. By 2011, Mujuru was dead, consumed in a mysterious farmhouse fire at the height of succession tensions. The official account satisfied few.
Rumours of betrayal, surveillance and quiet isolation in his final years still linger. The man who made Mugabe had become, in the end, expendable to him.
Fast-forward to November 2017. Mnangagwa, long known as “the Crocodile”, was unceremoniously dismissed and forced into exile as the G40 faction tightened its grip around Mugabe. Then came Chiwenga.
As commander of the defence forces, he issued a rare public warning against the purge of liberation war veterans. Within days, the military intervened. Tanks rolled, Mugabe fell, and Mnangagwa rose. Operation Restore Legacy had succeeded without open bloodshed.
Chiwenga emerged as the indispensable kingmaker of the new order. He was rewarded with the vice presidency, but more importantly, he held the implicit authority of the man who had delivered the throne. Yet history does not pause for gratitude.
By 2025 and into 2026, Mnangagwa’s push to extend his rule towards 2030 has brought him into quiet but unmistakable conflict with Chiwenga.
Purges within the security sector, accusations of treason, corruption dossiers and whispers of unexplained deaths suggest a familiar script unfolding. The kingmaker has become the threat.
These Zimbabwean episodes are not aberrations. They are expressions of a deeper and more universal political truth. The kingmaker’s curse is as old as power itself.
At its core lies a simple paradox. To make a ruler is to create a rival. The very qualities that make a kingmaker indispensable also make him dangerous.
He commands networks, holds secrets and embodies an alternative centre of authority. Once the protégé ascends, gratitude quickly mutates into suspicion. The debt must be erased, often by erasing the man.
History beyond Zimbabwe reinforces this pattern with brutal consistency. Consider Thomas Cromwell, the chief architect of Henry VIII’s consolidation of power. Cromwell dismantled monasteries, reshaped the English state and engineered the king’s break with Rome.
For years, he was indispensable. Yet when his influence grew too visible and his political calculations faltered, Henry turned on him. Cromwell was arrested, condemned and executed in 1540. The king he had empowered deemed him a liability.
A more modern example emerges from post-Soviet Russia. Boris Berezovsky played a decisive role in elevating Vladimir Putin in the late 1990s. Berezovsky believed he was installing a controllable figure, someone who would protect the interests of the oligarchic elite.
Instead, Putin consolidated power ruthlessly. Berezovsky was forced into exile, stripped of influence and later died under suspicious circumstances in the United Kingdom. The kingmaker had fundamentally misjudged the nature of the king.
In West Africa, the transition to democracy in Nigeria provided a more modern, though no less calculated, version of this divorce.
In 1999, a group of powerful retired generals, led by Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar, orchestrated the return of Olusegun Obasanjo to the presidency. They viewed Obasanjo as a safe pair of hands who would protect their interests and maintain the status quo.
Instead, upon his inauguration, Obasanjo immediately retired nearly one hundred senior military officers who had held political appointments, effectively decapitating the power base of the men who had installed him.
He understood that to lead a democracy, he had to first dismantle the military “kingmaker” system that birthed his administration.
These cases reveal a pattern that transcends culture and era. First comes elevation. Then comes consolidation. Finally comes elimination.
The mechanisms driving this cycle are both strategic and psychological. Strategically, the new ruler must neutralise any figure capable of challenging his authority.
The kingmaker, by definition, fits that description. He represents unfinished business, an alternative source of legitimacy. Removing him signals finality.
Psychologically, the process is even more revealing. Power amplifies paranoia. Leaders in high stakes environments develop a heightened sensitivity to threats.
The kingmaker’s proximity, knowledge and influence trigger this instinct. What begins as caution becomes suspicion, and suspicion often ends in pre-emptive action.
There is also the matter of ingratitude, a theme explored with clinical precision by Niccolò Machiavelli. In his signature book The Prince, he argues that men are inherently ungrateful and driven by self-interest.
Favours fade quickly in memory, especially when they become inconvenient. The kingmaker’s past service does not protect him. If anything, it condemns him, because it reminds the ruler of his dependence.
Machiavelli’s warning is stark. “He who is the cause of another becoming powerful is ruined.” The logic is ruthless but consistent. A ruler cannot feel secure while another man can claim authorship of his power.
The Zimbabwean case reflects this logic with unsettling precision. Mugabe could not indefinitely tolerate Mujuru’s quiet authority, especially when Mujuru began to actively work for Mugabe’s ousting.
Mnangagwa cannot indefinitely tolerate Chiwenga’s implicit leverage. In both cases, the kingmaker’s continued existence complicates the narrative of absolute authority.
There is also the factor of visibility. Kingmakers often begin in the shadows, but their influence inevitably becomes public knowledge. Once that happens, they transform into symbols. They become lightning rods for factional resentment and public suspicion.
Their removal then serves multiple purposes. It consolidates power, appeases rivals and reshapes the narrative of leadership.
Overreach accelerates this process. When kingmakers begin to accumulate wealth, extend their networks, or position themselves for succession, they cross an invisible line.
They cease to be useful instruments and become competing centres of power. At that point, their fate is usually sealed.
In Zimbabwe, Mujuru’s expanding influence, political meddling and his wife’s political ascent signalled precisely such a shift.
In the current moment, Chiwenga’s military backing and perceived presidential ambitions place him in a similarly precarious position. The parallels are too striking to ignore.
Yet the tragedy of the kingmaker’s curse is not confined to individuals. It corrodes institutions. Each cycle of elevation and elimination weakens the state.
It entrenches a politics of fear, where loyalty is temporary and survival depends on pre-emptive strikes. Governance becomes secondary to personal security.
For citizens, the consequences are profound. Stability becomes fragile, succession becomes opaque and accountability becomes elusive. The state is reduced to a battleground of competing elites, each aware that today’s ally may be tomorrow’s target.
Zimbabwe today stands at such a crossroads. The echoes of Mujuru’s fate linger in the unfolding tension between Mnangagwa and Chiwenga. The details differ, but the structure remains the same.
A ruler consolidates. A kingmaker becomes inconvenient. The system prepares to resolve the contradiction.
If Mnangagwa succeeds in neutralising Chiwenga, he will complete a familiar arc, one that mirrors Mugabe’s consolidation after sidelining his own rivals. If Chiwenga resists and prevails, he too will inherit the same dilemma. Power does not tolerate shared authorship.
This is the ultimate illusion of kingmaking. Each participant believes he can outmanoeuvre the pattern. Each believes he will be the exception. History suggests otherwise.
The lesson is as bleak as it is necessary. For those who seek to make kings, the risks are existential. Influence without ultimate control is inherently unstable. Leverage has an expiry date. And proximity to power often accelerates one’s downfall.
For those who hold power, the temptation to eliminate rivals may secure short-term dominance, but it perpetuates a cycle that ultimately weakens the state. Fear may preserve authority, but it cannot build lasting legitimacy.
And for citizens, the imperative is clear. Only strong institutions can break this cycle.
Transparent succession, constitutional limits and professional security forces can reduce the reliance on kingmakers. Without them, the pattern will repeat, as it has across centuries and continents.
Machiavelli wrote in 1532. Zimbabwe’s drama unfolds in 2026. The actors change. The logic endures.
Kingmakers build thrones. Then they become the first casualties of the power they helped create. The curse is not accidental. It is structural. And until that structure changes, Zimbabwe will remain trapped in a cycle where power is not merely contested, but consumed.
Gabriel Manyati is a Zimbabwean journalist and analyst delivering incisive commentary on politics, human interest stories, and current affairs.
