THE MOST ATTACKED MAN IN ZIMBABWE HAS THE LEAST POWER By Devine WaMwari Mafa If you landed in Harare today, knew nothing about Zimbabwe, and opened your phone, you would think Kudakwashe Tagwirei was the President of the Republic. Every day there is a new video, a new post, a new speech, and the same name is in all of them. Kuda this, Kuda that. A stranger would ask one fair question: if this man is not the President, why does everyone fight him as if he were? Here is the answer. They are not fighting Kuda. They are fighting the President, and they are too afraid to say so. THE MINISTRY ON PAPER Look at what Kuda actually holds. In October the President split the old Ministry of Finance in two and made Kuda Minister of Economic Development and Investment Promotion. Professor Mthuli Ncube kept Finance. Now read the Government Gazette of 12 November 2026, the Assignment of Functions for the Minister of Finance. The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Act, the Public Finance Management Act, the Income Tax Act, the Value Added Tax Act, the Revenue Authority Act, the Public Debt Management Act: all of it stays with Finance. The money laws, the tax laws, the bank laws and the debt laws are not in Kuda's hands. So what do they gave him? A title, and a mandate to bring investors. He also chairs the land tenure committee. That is a second hat, not a second throne. A man still running a business empire cannot run a full ministry, and the people who drew up this arrangement know it. The ministry gives him a seat at the table and the name of a minister. It does not give him the levers of the state. A man without the money laws, without the army and without the presidency is the most attacked man in the country. That should tell you something. WHO THE ATTACKS ARE REALLY FOR Everyone in Zimbabwe knows how this works. You cannot stand on a stage and call the President weak. You cannot say his choices are wrong. So you pick the man standing closest to him and you hit that man, again and again. Every blow at Kuda is a message to State House. The people throwing those blows know exactly where their real anger is pointed. They chose a safer target. The attacks did not start with Kuda's appointment. When the President's own investment adviser stood on platforms in Manicaland and warned against people "buying" the presidency, the whole country understood who he meant. The President had to step in to cool things down. That alone shows it was never a small quarrel between two businessmen. It was a fight about power, carried out in someone else's name. THEY ARE BUILDING WHAT THEY FEAR Here is the part the attackers do not see. Every attack makes Kuda bigger. America saw this with Donald Trump. His enemies talked about him every single day, and every day they talked he grew. Attention is fuel. You do not make a man irrelevant by putting his name in every headline. You make him the main character. Kuda has said publicly that he has no presidential ambition and that the President should finish his term. Take him at his word or don't. But if he ever changes his mind, he will owe his campaign to the very people trying to stop him. They will have done his advertising for free. WHAT ZIMBABWE SHOULD ASK INSTEAD Zimbabwe has real questions. Where are the jobs? Where are the investors? Why do our young people still cross the Limpopo to survive? A minister of investment should be judged on one thing: did money come into the country, and did ordinary people feel it? That is a fair test, and I will hold Kuda to it like anyone else. What is not fair, and not serious, is a whole political class chasing one man because they lack the courage to say what they really mean. If your quarrel is with the President, take it to the President. Stop using a businessman with a borrowed ministry as your punching bag. I grew up with Kuda. We went to the same church. I tell you that openly so you can weigh my words. But you do not need to know him to see what is happening. You only need to count. Count how many times his name was attacked this month, then count how many laws he controls. The numbers do not match. When the attacks are bigger than the power, the attacks are about someone else. Devine WaMwari Mafa is Founder and Chairman of the Zemia Economic Movement.