HARARE – Wicknell Chivayo has sought to circumvent a Zimpapers policy that blocked him from gifting vehicles to two Capitalk FM employees, announcing an elaborate workaround in which a car dealer will sell the workers the cars at a tiny fraction of their market value.
Chivayo visited the station on May 5 for an interview and, in what he described as a gesture of appreciation, offered $1,000 to each of 30 employees in the radio division, handing the cash to general manager Comfort Mbofana to distribute and offered to buy presenter Phathisani Sibanda a 2025 Toyota Fortuner GD6 and a female colleague a Toyota Aqua.
Mbofana, Chivayo said, approved everything on the spot and personally walked him to his car to collect the money.
But the gifts triggered an internal dispute. As ZimLive reported on Tuesday, Zimpapers’ gifts policy – introduced in 2024 – caps what staff may receive at $100 per gift, which must be declared to the company.
Each of the 30 workers may keep their $100 share; the remaining $27,000 must be returned. Sibanda, meanwhile, was given an ultimatum: reject the Fortuner or resign.
The policy’s origins are intertwined with Chivayo himself. It was put in place after he gifted Sibanda a Toyota Aqua during a separate radio appearance in 2024, at a time when the presenter was an independent contractor and Zimpapers had no grounds to act.
Sibanda joined as a full employee in January this year, and the gifts policy now applies to him in full.
In a lengthy statement posted X, Chivayo said he was “profoundly surprised” by the controversy, arguing that workers dedicated to informing, educating and entertaining the nation deserved appreciation rather than “unnecessary red tape and excessive bureaucracy.”
He then announced what amounts to a paper transaction designed to achieve the same end. A dealer he identified only as “Madzibaba Chipaga of Enterprise Car Sales” would sell Sibanda a new Fortuner for $100 and the female employee an Aqua for $50.
“No law restricts me from selling my property or assets at any price of my choice,” Chivayo quoted the dealer as saying.
The arrangement allows the two employees to technically purchase the vehicles themselves, removing Chivayo from the transaction on paper, while the economic reality remains identical to an outright gift.
He said he would send his lawyer Sikhumbuzo Mpofu to collect the $27,000 adding, with evident sarcasm, that Mpofu “probably needs it more than I do” to fuel the Range Rover Autobiography Chivayo had recently gifted him.
A Zimpapers executive said after Chivayo’s latest statement: “This changes nothing.”
