HARARE – Wicknell Chivayo’s ex-wife Sonja Madzikanda was arrested on Monday after the tender tycoon reported to police that she had stolen a device containing a “compromising” video of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Madzikanda, who filed for divorce from Chivayo last year, was detained at Highlands Police Station in Harare.
She filmed herself at the station denying the theft allegation, and instead accused the 45-year-old businessman of using photographs and footage with heads of state to threaten his opponents.
At the centre of the dispute is a video with potential political ramifications for Ramaphosa. It allegedly shows him meeting Chivayo well before his recent official visit to Zimbabwe, a timeline that would contradict the South African presidency’s claim that Ramaphosa was seeing Chivayo for the first time when the businessman joined President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s welcoming party and flew with the two leaders from Harare to Kwekwe.
South African presidency spokesman Vincent Magwenya described Chivayo as a “person of interest” to South African law enforcement and insisted that he was unknown to Ramaphosa. The existence of the earlier video would suggest that claim was misleading.
So how did Madzikanda obtained the alleged video, if indeed she possesses it as alleged?
In February this year, Madzikanda filed a fraud complaint against Chivayo at Sunnyside Police Station in Pretoria. According to her South African lawyer, Nolufefe Felicia Samalenge, her full statement to police describing the “fraud” was subsequently leaked to Chivayo.
On April 11, Chivayo allegedly contacted Madzikanda’s mother, Tabitha Madzikanda, forwarding a copy of his ex-wife’s police statement along with what the lawyer described as “unsavoury comments.” It was during this exchange that Chivayo allegedly sent a video of himself meeting Ramaphosa, boasting that the criminal complaint would amount to nothing.
Samalenge has since filed an official complaint with the chief prosecutor in Pretoria, accusing the investigating officer of leaking Madzikanda’s statement – a “premature disclosure which carries the unpleasant odours of corrupt interaction with a suspect by an investigating officer.”
“Our second complaint is that our client, her mother and all those near her have now been placed in mortal danger and are likely to be subjected to harassment, undue pressure and ill-treatment by the suspect,” Samalenge wrote on April 14.
Popular Zanu PF activist Rutendo Matinyarare posted a screen-grab from the alleged video on X, showing Chivayo smiling at the camera while Ramaphosa sat on an adjacent sofa, tieless, in what appears to be an informal private meeting.
Madzikanda says Chivayo originally reported her to police over denied access to their two minor children, and that the theft allegation only emerged after her lawyer intervened.
“This is a man who is heavily guarded as you are all aware. He has so many security guards around him and somehow I managed to get access to one of his devices and get a video of him with a president that’s very compromising. That is what I am now being arrested and detained for at Highlands police,” she said.
“I’m being arrested because he was sending around videos of him with heads of states threatening people. So this is a message to all presidents who deal with Wicknell – he takes videos and he uses them to threaten people.”
She fears the arrest is designed to “take my kids away from me.”
Chivayo has not commented about his ex-wife’s arrest.
Chivayo is a close ally of Mnangagwa and has leveraged that proximity to cultivate access to several African leaders. His social media accounts carry photographs of him in private meetings with the leaders of Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia and Nigeria among others.
