THE burial this afternoon of businessman Mr Wicknell Munodaani Chivayo and his wife Lucy Muteke, killed last week in a helicopter crash with two crew members and an aide, pulls down the curtain on the almost 46 years of life of one of Zimbabwe’s most successful businesspersons and a flamboyant public personality.
Mr Chivayo built his own successes.
Born in the Gandami area of Chivhu in November 1980, his father was killed in a car accident when he was around 10-years-old and he was subsequently raised by his mother.
His formal education at Dudley Hall Primary School and Churchill Boys High School ended when he was 16.
He started his working life as a wages clerk in a bus company.
His background was in apostolic churches. These have been looked down upon by many because they worship in the open air, declining to build halls and auditoriums that mark most sects, and because many were in low-income self-employment for decades.
But the Apostolics had moved into areas where they could be self-sufficient, refusing to work for colonial overlords. At the root of their economic philosophy was the desire to be self-employed and when business doors started opening they were among the first to move into a whole range of new businesses, establishing their own companies.
Chivayo was one of these and among the more successful from his generation.
This willingness, almost an obligation, to build businesses and innovate and use their natural talents is an example for many others, showing that it is possible to succeed without inherited wealth, professional qualifications or much beyond a decent upbringing.
That individualism was part of his public persona. He was keener on looking at people as individuals, rather than as members of this group or that group.
That in turn made him a national unifier, although he approached this position from a different angle than those of a more theoretical bent.
The flamboyance was also part of that public persona, although underneath there was a far more serious person.
Social media made a lot of his individual gifts to artistes, footballers, public personalities and others. Those caught the headlines. One interesting point, often missed, was that besides his spontaneous generosity to people he liked or respected, he never bothered to try and get even with those he disliked. He just moved on without animosity.
But besides the flamboyant gifts were his donations to churches, usually the local ones where he had a link either personal or through family. The gifts were often practical, among them four-wheel drive vehicles and cash for specific programmes and buildings.
His largest single gift of vehicles was not a collection of luxury cars, but rather two batches totalling 20 state-of-the-art ambulances equipped and able to handle intensive care.
These were given to the Ministry of Health and Child Care to accelerate the programme to have a full-care ambulance in every district. Lives were saved with these ambulances, and Chivayo added practical support with fuel so they were kept on the road.
He gave significant funding for women’s projects to help them enter the business world and become self-supporting at higher levels than traditional roles, although again the headlines tended to minimise these sort of gifts.
As a businessperson, he went for what he considered were good deals.
There were several investigations, and even one set of charges, over some of his deals, but in the end he and his companies were cleared of dishonest behaviour. Again, the headlines overlooked that he usually gave value for his contracts, and that is why he won more.
Most critics disliked the surface, the flamboyance, the gusto with which he lived life.
He enjoyed living in the headlines, but under all that was in many ways a quite different person.
And we hope it is that person who will be remembered when he is buried today.
