Wicknell gives away a $350K car. Zimbabwean teachers earn $200. Let that sink in.”

In the dusty rural town of Gokwe, Ms. Ruwizhi stood in front of a cracked blackboard, chalk in hand and hunger in her belly. She had walked 9 kilometers that morning to get to the school, a pair of worn-out shoes barely holding together. Her students sat on rickety benches, eager to learn, despite having no textbooks, no electricity, and sometimes no food.

She earned $200 a month.

It was a salary not paid on time. Sometimes it came in local currency, quickly chewed up by inflation. She had stopped dreaming of owning a house, or even buying meat for her children. Survival had become a subject she never studied in university, but now taught herself daily.

Meanwhile, in Borrowdale Brooke, miles away from that broken classroom, the roar of engines filled the air. Wicknell Chivhayo, a businessman whose name had become synonymous with flashy displays of unexplained wealth, laughed heartily as he handed over yet another luxury vehicle—this one worth $350,000. A Land Cruiser VXR. It sparkled in the sun like a god had kissed it.

It was a gift. Not a prize. Not a reward for innovation. Just another gift.

Cameras flashed. Social media erupted. The cheers of sycophants drowned out the groans of the forgotten.

That car alone could pay 1,750 teachers. It could feed a village. It could buy textbooks for an entire district, or renovate a neglected rural school. But it was gone in a flash—another toy in a twisted parade of power.

Ms. Ruwizhi saw the headlines that evening on her neighbor’s cracked Tecno phone. No ZESA, so the battery was low. But the message was clear.

“Wicknell donates car worth $350,000.”

She said nothing. She didn’t cry. She just turned away and looked at the exercise books she still had to mark under candlelight. A single tear fell—not for herself, but for the students who still believed education was the path out of poverty.

They didn’t yet know the truth.

That in Zimbabwe, you can hold a master's degree and starve, while someone with connections can bathe in millions. That corruption was now a god, worshipped openly. That the state had sold the soul of the nation to gluttony and greed.

And as the engines roared in Harare, a generation of thinkers, builders, and dreamers fell silent—trapped in a system that praised the rich and punished the righteous.