PhD Development Economics
Joined August 2018
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We are witnessing the end of once mighty @ZANUPF_Official. Political illegitimacy is now too heavy. Local & international community have rejected ED. The econ. crisis makes it impossible 4 patronage.
Tava kumagumo!
Pliz screen shot this.
Mai Mujuru vanoti 'Batai Mazwi aya"
Prof. Mlambo retweeted
You’re raising a very critical point my brother.
I will add and say, of the top 50 or even 100 billionaires in the world, how many made their money through tilling the land?
Uber, Facebook, X(Twitter) and many global companies are making billions from SA without even having an office.
Prof. Mlambo retweeted
My brother @daddyhope, thank you for engaging. But let's argue about what I actually said.
My point was simple. South Africans have the right to choose a president of any race, as long as that person can deliver a democratic developmental state. Race doesn't qualify anyone and it doesn't disqualify anyone. Delivery does. I never said the land question isn't real. The 72% farmland figure is real, and so is the wealth concentration. We agree on the diagnosis.
Where we differ is on who has shown they can treat it.
You also wrote, "for someone with a PhD, my brother." Look at my profiles on X and Facebook. You won't find "Dr" or "PhD" in either name. I'm Eddie Mahembe, nothing more. I've never used a title to win an argument on social media, and I won't start now. So let's leave my qualifications out of it. Bringing a degree into a debate is how you dismiss the person instead of answering the argument. Judge what I said by the evidence, the same way I'm asking South Africans to judge leaders by delivery and not by skin colour.
You brought statistics, so let's use all of them, from Stats SA and the Presidency (see the attached charts):
1) Official unemployment was 22% in 1994. Today it is 33.6%. On the expanded measure it went from 35% to almost 44%.
2) Real GDP grew 3.2% in 1994 and 1.1% in 2025.
3) Poverty has fallen, from 57.5% in 2006 to 37.9% in 2023. That's mainly thanks to social grants, and I give credit for it.
4) Inequality has barely moved. The Gini went from 0.72 to 0.635 (some say 0.54.1 while others put at 0.80), still among the worst in the world.
That is 30 years of a black-led, transformation-branded national government. Black South Africans who are jobless today are not jobless because of the colour of the president.
Now compare the Western Cape with the national average. Unemployment is 19.5% against 33.6%. Poverty is 21.4% against 37.9%. It has been the fastest-growing province over the past decade. Inequality there is still far too high, and I won't pretend otherwise. But if the test is "who is putting more black and coloured people into work and out of poverty?", the evidence doesn't follow the racial script.
On Zimbabwe: nobody called you a racist, and I would ask you to show me the same courtesy. My point about ZANU-PF was not "land reform destroyed Zimbabwe." It was that ZANU-PF taught us to see every question through black versus white, so that a party can loot and still call itself the liberator. You yourself list looting, plunder and stolen mineral revenue as what destroyed Zimbabwe. That is exactly my point.
The racial flag was the cover. And post seems to perpetuate that cover, unfortunately.
South Africa should take that lesson seriously. Where black incompetence is justified, under the cover of liberation or skin colour.
Land, jobs and wealth for the black majority: yes. But a democracy that judges leaders by their skin rather than their results is not the answer to apartheid. It is apartheid's logic turned upside down.
Judge them by delivery!
Let’s allow South Africans to choose the best person to deliver a democratic and prosperous nation. Their constitution allows them. Their institutions allow them. And the recent results seem to suggest that South Africans are ready to embrace leaders who deliver a better life for them!
In a normal democracy, there is nothing wrong with having a white president, just as there is nothing wrong with having a black one. Nobody is arguing that a person's skin colour should disqualify them from office. But South Africa is not a normal democracy in the sense you are trying to paint, and pretending otherwise is either naïve or dishonest.
South Africa is the most unequal country on earth. That inequality was not an accident of the market. It was designed, legislated and enforced over more than 300 years of colonialism and apartheid. The 1913 Natives Land Act confined the black majority to a sliver of the land. Bantu Education was built to train black children for servitude.
Job reservation locked black workers out of skilled employment. Forced removals tore communities apart. Every one of these laws had one purpose, to transfer land, wealth and opportunity from black people to white people.
Thirty years of democracy have not undone that. White South Africans make up about 7% of the population, yet the government's own land audit found that they own about 72% of the farmland held by individuals.
The richest 10% of South Africans hold more than 80% of the country's wealth, and that 10% is still overwhelmingly white. Black unemployment remains several times higher than white unemployment. The apartheid geography of townships on the edges of cities, far from jobs, is still there for anyone with eyes to see.
So the question in South Africa is not the colour of the president. The question is whether the president, and the party behind him or her, is committed to dismantling the structures that apartheid built.
And here the record of the Democratic Alliance (DA) speaks for itself. The DA went to court to overturn the Expropriation Act, the law meant to speed up land reform.
It went to court against the Employment Equity Amendment Act, which seeks to open up the workplace to those who were deliberately shut out. It has repeatedly attacked Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), the very policies designed to redress what apartheid did.
A party whose instinct is to protect the existing distribution of land and wealth cannot be trusted to fix an inequality that was built by race.
Yes, Helen Zille opposed apartheid. As a journalist, she helped expose the truth about the death of Steve Biko, and that deserves respect. But opposing apartheid in the 1970s is not the same as being willing to dismantle its economic legacy today. Many people who were against the system are perfectly comfortable with the privileges it left behind.
And please, do not drag ZANUPF into this. I have criticised ZANUPF more than most people alive, and I have paid for it. But ZANUPF's abuse of the land question does not make the land question go away. The fact that a corrupt regime exploited a real grievance does not mean the grievance was not real.
Democracy is not just counting votes. A democracy that leaves the majority landless, jobless and locked out of the economy, while a minority holds the wealth it accumulated under a racist system, is a democracy standing on very thin ice. Any South African president, white or black, who is not committed to fixing that is not fit to lead that country.
And for someone with a PhD, my brother, I am deeply disappointed by the level of scholarship you brought to an issue you chose to tackle, and dismally failed.
Using ZANUPF as a scapegoat in the South African story is exactly what racists do. With your education, you should know that Zimbabwe was not destroyed by land reform. Zimbabwe was destroyed by the massive looting of public funds, the plunder of its natural resources, and a country that received little or no royalties from the minerals dug out of its own soil. That is what destroyed Zimbabwe.
So stop going around peddling the lie that it was ZANUPF this and ZANUPF that. Do not frighten South Africans out of doing what needs to be done by waving Zimbabwe at them. And no, ZANUPF did not kill our reasoning capacity. That is precisely why we can still tell the difference between right and wrong.
You cannot pretend that South Africa is a complete democracy when millions of people go to bed on empty stomachs while the richest 10% of the population owns more than 80% of the wealth. A man of your learning should not be defending that.
That is why the question of a white president matters in the way many of us have framed it. We are not saying white people should not have the same democratic right as black people to be elected.
We are saying black people must have the same democratic right to access wealth, something the white-led DA has fought against at every turn.
I hope you now understand where you got it wrong, and where this conversation should have been all along.
You cannot champion a democracy that makes a white president a lived reality, my brother, and turn a blind eye to a democracy that gives black South Africans an equal right to land, wealth and opportunity. A democracy that guarantees one and denies the other is not a democracy, it is apartheid with a ballot box.
Prof. Mlambo retweeted
When we say the Government in Zimbabwe 🇿🇼 is irresponsible, this is what we mean. The school is being destroyed while children are in class 🤦🏾♂️🙆🏾♂️😭😭😭
Prof. Mlambo retweeted
Kenyan starvation cult leader convicted of deaths of nearly 200 children
♦️ He and the others convicted will be sentenced on November 6
zimlive.com/kenyan-starvatio…
Prof. Mlambo retweeted
Thank you for raising this important point @LynneStactia. We have said, repeatedly, that this Mbinga culture, manifesting in the form of donations is actually anti-development!
Those with cash to ‘donate cars’ should set up car assembly plants… this will have ripple effects: job creation, GDP growth, taxes, exports, etc!
ED’s regime doesn’t know how to run a modern economy.
🔹One day, we will collectively realise that “Mbinga” culture has severely damaged the Zimbabwean economy. On the surface, these individuals appear to be drivers of economic growth, but their actual contribution is virtually non-existent. Their wealth is purely for show, idle capital locked away in private home vaults rather than circulating through formal banking systems where it could fund national development.
🔸Furthermore, they operate “briefcase companies” that generate zero meaningful employment, leaving the masses empty-handed. Instead of creating a sustainable economic ecosystem, Mbinga culture fosters an unhealthy dependency, where only “Vapemhi” manage to benefit. This culture is deeply toxic, replacing genuine economic productivity with superficial extravagance that leaves society poorer.
Prof. Mlambo retweeted
A POEM: I’m Crying, but Not Mourning
(On the death of Wicknell Chivayo, 30 September 2026)
Eddie Mahembe
04 October 2026
“To mourn is to miss a man.
To cry is to see the bill he left behind.”
They tell me a big man has fallen from the sky
over Marondera, at five in the evening:
five souls aboard, and none walked away.
Yes, my eyes are wet.
But hear me, Zimbabwe, before you hand me a black cloth:
I am crying, but I am not mourning.
To mourn is to miss a man.
To cry is to suddenly see
the bill he left behind.
I cry for Gwanda,
where the sun still shines for free
on a field promised a hundred megawatts.
Five million dollars were paid in advance,
and the panels never came.
The courts said not guilty.
The darkness said nothing.
My child still reads by candlelight.
I cry for the ballot paper.
The leaked recordings said it passed through his hands
in a race his Principal was running.
Who referees the match
when the coach holds the whistle?
I cry for one man, one vote,
the promise our parents bled for in the bush,
now handed to Parliament like a parcel
while cars and cash rolled into the yards
of those who said YES.
They call Amendment Number Three a reform.
I call it the day my vote was told to stay home.
I cry for the singers who sang for the keys,
for the pastors who preached to the cars,
for the opposition voices that went quiet
when the gifts came calling.
I cry for the souls of those who received those gifts.
What is a car worth
when the price is your people?
I cry for the cars themselves,
Range Rovers, Fortuners, Mercedes, a river of keys,
each one built in a factory far away,
each one a payslip for a worker in another land.
Even on his last day, he gave away cars and cash,
and the cars still came from someone else’s hands.
Imagine if that money had built an assembly plant here,
where our boys bolt the doors
and our girls wire the lights.
One plant would give a thousand jobs,
where a thousand cars gave a thousand thank-you posts.
A gift can be driven away.
A factory stays and feeds a town.
I cry for the region,
where his handshake went from palace to palace
and taught our neighbours
how a nation’s silence can be bought.
I cry for the mothers in our hospitals,
pushing life into the world
with no painkillers, no bandages, no medicine, no care,
while fortunes flew in helicopters overhead.
And when the fortune fell,
the same broken system came for him too.
Ambulances raced seventy kilometres from Harare.
The helicopters once paraded with ribbons were nowhere in sight.
What remained of five human beings
was gathered in plastic bags.
Money bought him the sky.
It could not buy, from the country he helped hollow out,
a single working rescue.
I cry for the youths with degrees and no jobs,
selling airtime at the robots,
crossing the Limpopo with a bag and a prayer,
their futures spent on tenders they will never see.
I cry for Lucy, beside him to the end,
for Ms Magagula, who boarded for Harare,
for Captain Soda and Captain Mutavirwa,
who were only doing their jobs.
Their families’ grief is real,
and I will not dance on any grave.
Had he built a school,
one classroom with a roof that does not leak,
or a clinic where a mother gives birth in peace,
or even a crèche, a small ECD
where village children learn their letters,
then maybe, just maybe,
the nation would have given him a legacy
worthy of a provincial hero.
Instead he leaves us photographs:
keys handed over, smiles for the camera,
and not one brick for the poor
that will outlast the shine.
So do not call my tears mourning.
Mourning looks back at a man.
My crying looks ahead at a nation
and asks: who will build the clinic,
who will light Gwanda,
who will give back the vote?
If you are crying too, share it.
Which Zimbabwe are you talking about? Mourning took place for the 100 Kariba Ferry and our relatives dying everyday in public hospitals without medication.
Zimbabwe has been plunged into mourning following the death of prominent businessman Wicknell Chivayo in a fatal helicopter crash near Marondera this evening.
heraldonline.co.zw/live-trag…
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Prof. Mlambo retweeted
For young women (only). Young women 20+ get your education. Learn a trade. Have a skill. Be self sufficient.
The world is harsher to poor women and women who can’t afford to take care of themselves.
Get a skill and trade. Care for yourself.
Young girls -20 stay in school.
Hezvoko @ProfJNMoyo
Just for the record...
Prof. Mlambo retweeted
Dear @amanpour. President Emmerson Mnangagwa is in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. Can you kindly do a follow-up interview with him. Zimbabweans are counting on you to document the new developments in the country. He has got a lot to share.
Thank you in advance.
Prof. Mlambo retweeted
A breath of fresh air🙌🏾
This drama has to end.
Let’s build a nation of hard work.
These gifts make us a poor and dependent nation!
Dear Wicknell,
Thank you for your generous words about my professional work and for your kind acknowledgment of my wife. I appreciate your recognition of the dedication with which I discharged the briefs entrusted to me.
My wife and I have carefully considered your announcement and must respectfully decline the vehicle and both cash gifts.
For clarity, we last spoke in June 2024, and I have undertaken no professional work for you since then. The historical work to which your tribute refers was performed in my professional capacity and paid for in full. My remuneration was for services actually rendered.
Your announcement came as a complete surprise, without prior notice or discussion. Given the distance that has developed between us since our last conversation, the substantial nature of the gifts, and their express connection to past professional services, I must approach this gesture with particular care.
Zimbabwe’s Legal Practitioners’ Code of Conduct requires us to preserve our integrity, safeguard our professional independence and maintain public confidence in the profession. The International Bar Association’s principles and the International Commission of Jurists’ writings likewise emphasise that a lawyer’s professional judgment must remain independent and free from conflicting personal interests.
Applying those standards to these circumstances, I consider it necessary to decline benefits that could reasonably create a perception of personal financial obligation extending beyond a concluded and fully remunerated professional engagement. My wife and I attach great importance to preserving both our professional standing and public confidence in our independence.
The independence reflected in your generous tribute is a responsibility I must continue to uphold.
Please receive our decision in the respectful spirit in which it is conveyed. We appreciate the generosity expressed and your acknowledgment of my past work. Our decision is nevertheless firm: we will not accept the vehicle or either of the cash gifts.
We wish you well and trust that you will understand and respect our position.
Advocate Dr Lewis Uriri
Prof. Mlambo retweeted
My brother Jacob @JMafume,
We grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, a generation sent to school by peasants who had endured nearly a century of colonial deprivation. The whole idea of independence was to emancipate the black Zimbabwean, who had been subjected to that cruelty for so long.
Today, my brother, I write to you in deep pain, because the women in that video represent the very mothers who sent our generation to university, selling tomatoes, onions and vegetables of every kind. They are in the streets today because they have no jobs, and the children they educated have no jobs either. The economy collapsed long ago.
I wonder whether you, as mayor of the capital city, might go and speak to the president about this. These people were put in the streets by the ruling party itself, before the election, and told they could sell their wares there. You know this, Mr Mayor. To treat our own people this way makes one question the whole essence of Ubuntu.
We complain when South Africans mistreat our people, kicking them out of the streets where they sell their goods, yet we come home and do the same to our own, and worse. At least the South Africans simply move people on. They do not destroy their goods the way we are doing here. It is evil, my brother.
I know the order comes from the central government, but I am pleading with you to show these women some empathy and compassion. Where else will they find money to put food on the table?
The bylaws being enforced were written by a colonial government that could actually provide jobs, one whose economy sustained those who could not find work by allowing them to trade at marketplaces.
Laws, and I say this because you are a lawyer, my brother, are rooted in common sense. They do not supersede it. A law makes sense only when it serves a purpose.
If a law forbids people from selling where their market has always existed, and you drive them away with no alternative, no industrial work for the men who once brought something home, then the wives are left with no choice but to take to the streets themselves. The men have nothing, and so the women step out like this.
I hope you will find it within yourself to reflect on this and speak to the president. We cannot treat our own people this way. We lose all humanity when we do, and when television cameras capture it for the world to see, other countries have no obligation to treat us any better.
Why should a South African treat me with more dignity than my own people show me at home?
I do not want to say much more. I have been deeply, deeply pained watching this video.
Prof. Mlambo retweeted
Mugabe declared his birthday: National Youth Day.
Mnangagwa declared his birthday: Munhumutapa Day.
New Deception 🤦🏾♂️
ZIMBABWE NEEDS SENSIBLE LEADERS… #JustImagine If every U.S. president had declared his own birthday a national public holiday, the United States could theoretically have 45 additional presidential birthday holidays, because 45 different individuals have served as president.
#JustImagine if every president had made his own birthday a public holiday, America would be celebrating presidents instead of being productive and fulfilling the national goals. In Zimbabwe, we need a new direction! #JustImagine #NewPolitics
Prof. Mlambo retweeted
While Mr Garwe and the Zimbabwean Gvt are talking about removing vendors and CLEANING up urban areas.
Who is talking about cleaning up our water bodies?
@thestandardzim is reporting that “lake Chivero at breaking point”
thestandard.co.zw/#/article/…
