SOUTH AFRICA-BASED Zimbabwean anti-sanctions campaigner, Rutendo Matinyarare, has lifted the lid on how controversial Kudakwashe Tagwirei took risks to build his business empire from his retrenchment package in the arly 2000s.
Matinyarare, chairperson of the Zimbabweans Unite Against
US War Sanctions (ZUAUWS), which is lobbying for the removal of sanctions
against Zimbabwe, said the growth of Tagwireyi’s vast business empire could
also be credited to his wife, Sandra, a former top bank executive.
Sandra and Kuda combined their names to name their company
Sakunda.
Tagwirei and his Sakunda company have attracted a lot of
attention with critics accusing the businessman of capitalising on his
proximity to the Zanu PF elite to build his business empire. Tagwirei has been
placed on the US and UK sanctions lists because of his alleged links with the
Presidium.
Matinyarare claimed that Tagwirei’s business-life story
started in early 2000 after his retrenchment and at a time when the country was
facing its worst fuel crisis.
“After Kuda got his retrenchment package, he combined with
his wife to create Sakunda which is a neologism of Sandra and Kuda. They then
went on to apply for a fuel trading licence and sadly, that year (2002), only
149 fuel licences were issued by the government and Sakunda missed out,”
Matinyarare said in a long thread about Tagwirei’s business background.
“Instead of despairing, Sandra and Kuda leased a fuel licence
from one of the connected people who had been licensed. In their first six
months, they got a contract to supply US$500 000 worth of fuel per month to
some entity, but they didn’t have the money.
“They subsequently approached Sandra’s former boss, John
Mangudya (then commercial head at a leading bank), and were advised to mortgage
their house for the loan. They did just that, and after getting the loan, they
began pushing half a million dollars’ worth of fuel every month.”
Mangudya is the current central bank governor.
According to Matinyarare, Sakunda started pushing 20
million litres of fuel per month into the market, becoming the largest fuel
supplier by 2012, attracting the attention of the government.
“After some background checks by the intelligence, the
government approached Sakunda and offered it a share of the Beira pipeline
because the government had no money or capacity to carry the 60 million litres
of fuel it was contracted to carry, thus it was losing money in fees for unused
pipeline capacity,” he said.
“Sandra and Kuda took a gamble by investing in sending fuel
down a pipeline, even though they had dozens of trucks. This drastically
reduced their fuel costs and increased their margins exponentially over
competitors.
“By innovating, learning, creating global relationships,
taking risks, outsmarting the competition, keeping cash-in-hand to integrate
(vertically and horizontally) the value chain, being willing to invest their
money in projects like the pipeline and reinvesting their profits in the same
country for years without splashing out on luxuries; Sandra and Kuda made lots
of money and grew wealthy.”
He added: “And now that they have made more money than
most, by remaining in Zimbabwe and consolidating the market, they are demonised
and called a monopoly for being smart, patriotic and innovative.”
In 2021, Britain imposed sanctions on Tagwirei, saying the
payments his company Sakunda received for Command Agriculture had undermined
Zimbabwe’s economy. The US Treasury has also added him to its own list of
sanctioned Zimbabweans. Newsday
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