HARARE — Wicknell Chivayo has revealed that gospel preacher Emmanuel Makandiwa turned down an undisclosed gift and instead offered to pray for him, a gesture the businessman said he neither wanted nor needed.
“Prophet Makandiwa and his wife instead gratuitously offered to invite me to his house to pray for me to have more blessings in order to bless others,” Chivayo wrote on Facebook on Sunday.
When asked to clarify what he meant by gratuitously, he responded: “I didn’t need any prayers from him.”
The disclosure came as Chivayo pushed back against former MP Temba Mliswa, who had described his practice of gifting motor vehicles and large sums of cash to politicians and influential figures as “excitable actions serving no purpose.”
Chivayo insisted the gifts were voluntary and recipients were free to decline, naming two others who had done so without friction. Eunor Guti, widow of ZAOGA founder Ezekiel Guti, turned down $2 million in cash and a Toyota Land Cruiser 300 Series. ZIFA president Nqobile Magwizi also declined.
“In retrospect, a few have declined donations I offered them and there were never any hard feelings whatsoever,” he wrote. “Known examples are Mrs Guti from ZAOGA and the president of ZIFA Nqobile Magwizi.”
The Makandiwa rebuff, however, appears to sting differently. The founder of the United Family International Church, whose sprawling Chitungwiza campus draws tens of thousands of followers, is one of Zimbabwe’s most prominent televangelist figures.
Chivayo said the rejection had not dampened his generosity. “I move on to the next,” he wrote. “The waiting list is too long.”
