Wicknell Chivayo: The deals that took him from Chikurubi convict to Govt tender king

Story By Staff Reporter

The rise of Wicknell Chivayo, who has died in a helicopter crash, tied closely to some of Zimbabwe’s biggest and most controversial government deals.

His tenderpreneur story starts with a company that existed long before Chivayo became a household name. Intratrek’s foundation was mired in everything from claims of drug running to illegal circumcision tools. It was a fitting start.

Where Intratrek started

Ibrahim Yusuf founded Intratrek in 2001 as a commodities company. Today it is better known as Chivayo’s company.

Yusuf had a colourful and controversial history. Multiple police affidavits in Zambia named him as part of a drug ring. A 2010 Mail & Guardian investigation identified him as a seller of “pill packages” that Mandrax smugglers used. Zambia’s Drug Enforcement Commission said then that Yusuf “is a well-known drug trafficker”.

A detention warrant for drug dealer McDonald Ngwira claimed the cartel had imported “two million tablets of a poisonous drug called Methaqualone hydrochloride…popularly known as Mandrax”. Yusuf denied the allegations.

South African media reports in 2010 also said he held “exclusive distribution rights” to the Tara Klamp, which they described as “a questionable male circumcision device”.

When Yusuf needed a partner in Zimbabwe, he found a fitting one in Chivayo.

Anash Latchman, a former associate who worked with Intratrek from December 2006 to late 2007, said: “I found it strange that Intratrek had no employees.” Ironically, that description would follow Intratrek in the years ahead.

How Chivayo came into the picture

Chivayo appeared before Parliament in 2018 over the Gwanda solar project. He told MPs he owned 50% of Intratrek and that Yusuf owned the other half. But Intratrek’s lawyer, Bruce Tokwe, contradicted him at the same hearing. Tokwe said Chivayo was the company’s MD but not a shareholder.

Still, Chivayo appears to have prevailed through his connections. Intratrek stayed in bad headlines, and its “shareholders” fought for control, yet the tenders never stopped coming.

The energy deals

In 2014, Government looked for projects to end Zimbabwe’s power shortages. That meant refurbishing old thermal power stations and building a 100MW solar plant.

Intratrek had no track record of building power stations. Instead, with Chivayo at its head, it positioned itself as a middleman for foreign bidders on Zimbabwe Power Company (ZPC) projects. Chivayo proudly boasted about this during a Parliament hearing.

The contracts included a US$73 million deal to refurbish the Harare Power Station. For this deal, he partnered Indian company Jaguar Overseas. Jaguar was also his partner on a bigger contract: US$163 million to fix Munyati Power Station.

This raised questions. Jaguar had failed to put up the money for the Harare project, yet it still got the Munyati deal. The State Procurement Board rejected recommendations to retender the deal and went ahead with the award.

Intratrek won more, including a US$128 million tender for the Gairezi hydropower project, where Chivayo partnered Angelique International.

The Gwanda saga

Then came the deal that became the centrepiece of Chivayo’s tender schemes. In 2014, Intratrek announced it would partner Green Solar Europa to build the Gwanda solar plant for US$350 million.

When the project went to tender, Chivayo partnered another company, China’s CHiNT. China Jiangxi Corporation emerged as the lowest bidder at US$184 million. Then things got complicated. ZPC approached Jiangxi and told it to partner Intratrek, a losing bidder that had originally bid US$248 million. Soon afterwards, the State Procurement Board cancelled the Jiangxi deal, citing an increase in its price to US$207 million.

In October 2015, officials announced Intratrek as the winner. Reports first put the contract at US$171 million. Two weeks later, at the signing ceremony, the figure had become US$202 million.

The project then spent years caught up in legal and contractual disputes. ZPC paid Intratrek US$5 million upfront to prepare the project, but it cancelled the contract after Chivayo delayed work. He blamed Zimbabwe’s sovereign risk for his failure to raise money from investors. A recent court ruling ordered Intratrek to complete the project in 24 months.

Gwanda never produced any power, but it did something else for the attention-loving Chivayo: it made him famous.

In one radio interview, the host asked how he made his money. Chivayo retorted: “I’m surprised you would even ask me that. Because I’m all over the papers signing big deals. When you see me on ZBC signing a $123 million deal, I mean, that’s not a joke. What it means is that ZPC is going to pay me $123 million, that’s what it means, literally.”

The foreign partners

Intratrek’s choice of foreign partners in those energy deals said a lot about how Chivayo did business. Jaguar Overseas failed to show proof of financing for the Harare power plant, yet still won the Munyati contract.

Angelique International was another Intratrek partner. When it won contracts in Zimbabwe with Intratrek, Indian authorities were investigating it over allegations of kickbacks. They raided six of its offices, seized documents and found large sums of various foreign currencies.

Still, Government defended the deals. Energy Minister Samuel Undenge said the tenders had gone to the best bidders. A Herald report addressing criticism of middlemen said tender winners did not have to demonstrate a track record in executing energy projects. They only needed to partner “credible, reliable competent technical partners”. That was hardly an accurate description of Chivayo’s partners.

For Chivayo, however, the energy deals changed everything. He had just come out of Chikurubi prison, where he served time for fraud. Now he walked the corridors of Government with big firms like China’s CHiNT in tow. He had upgraded from convict to the most recognisable face of the Government tender system.

None of the energy projects ever reached project phase, but they helped him sit at the front of the tender queue. More deals followed.

That Starlink post

In 2024, President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s X account announced over a weekend that IMC Communications would be Starlink’s exclusive partner in Zimbabwe.

The public had never heard of the company before. It did not take long for people to trace IMC to Chivayo, operating from a nondescript address at Karigamombe Building. The announcement clearly blindsided telecoms regulator POTRAZ, which had to announce that IMC was only one of several approved Starlink resellers, not the exclusive partner. The Starlink partnership never took off at the scale planned.

US$400m in medical supplies

In 2025, officials announced that TTM Global Medical Exports, based in South Africa, had won a tender to supply medicines and cancer treatment equipment. It later emerged that Chivayo was a director of the company. A leaked contract showed Government would pay US$110 million a year for four years.

The US$20m bank letter

A leaked letter Chivayo wrote to his bankers offered another glimpse into the scale of his Government dealings. He told the bank to let him withdraw US$20 million in cash, well above the allowed limit. He said he had won US$200 million in State tenders and needed the money to pay suppliers.

The ZEC contracts

Then came the election-materials controversy. Reports said Chivayo had won US$40 million in contracts to supply materials to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission.

In a leaked 2024 audio recording, Chivayo spoke with his former partners Mike Chimombe and Moses Mpofu. He boasted of other contracts involving everything from the security services to the Immigration Department. He told Chimombe and Mpofu to be patient because more money was coming, and he said President Mnangagwa treated him as a son.

He told them: “Ndakachibata kuti dzvi” — “I have the President in the palm of my hand.”

Lessons from Chikurubi

At Chikurubi, Chivayo befriended mercenary Simon Mann. In his book, Cry Havoc, Mann recalls a conversation with Chivayo: “He (Wicknell) tells me how Zimbabwe works…In Africa the unsolicited gift is massively powerful. If one of us gives $20,000 to Mugabe for a birthday present, then it is a big deal. That person will be asked to lunch or something. He will be expected to make a request. He has earned that right.”

Reporting based on original coverage by NewZwire.