HARARE – Drink-drive socialite Genius Kadungure is getting a hero’s burial on Saturday after a fiery November 8 crash in his Rolls Royce which killed three friends and left another driver and his passenger requiring hospital treatment.
Kadungure, 36, was a hero of Harare’s streets, rising from a mundane life of an unemployed youth selling vegetables to get by to a wealth-flaunting social media juggernaut, followed by over 600,000 people on Instagram.
Kadungure had just celebrated the birthday of his friend Mitchelle ‘Moana’ Amuli at his Dreams nightclub during a wild all-night drinking bender, which police tried to stop three times, when he crashed his expensive motor against a Honda Fit driving in the opposite direction on Borrowdale Road.
On Friday, thousands of people witnessed his funeral procession as his body was driven to Domboshava, a peri-urban neighbourhood just out of Harare where he built an imposing mansion now dotted with expensive sports cars including a Ferrari and a Lamborghini. A Bentley would be in the parking lot, but it is being held by police after ZIMRA officials said it was fraudulently imported from South Africa.
While Kadungure’s lavish spending was obvious, documented almost by the minute on social media, the true source of his wealth remained a mystery.
Zimbabweans were however treated to glimpses of police inquiries into his lifestyle. He was arrested and charged for smuggling millions worth of fuel into Zimbabwe, while avoiding paying tax.
He was also arrested over an elaborate 2012 scam in which a Member of Parliament Dexter Nduna and another man were allegedly skimmed off of over R1.5 million.
Posing as a procurement agent of Marange Diamonds, Kadungure was alleged to have created fictitious companies registered in South Africa complete with bank accounts, websites and landline numbers.
Nduna and the other man were told Marange Diamonds’ recommended suppliers were the companies Kadungure had registered. Once the money was deposited, the bank accounts were closed and landline phones discontinued.
“He destroyed my life,” Nduna told a court in 2018, but Kadungure was acquitted for lack of evidence.
In Harare, Kadungure ran a company called Pioneer Gases, an arm of his Piko Trading Group registered in South Africa. A nondescript industrial site in Harare’s Southerton, whose biggest investment was three gas tanks, is the unconvincing centerpiece of what was projected as Kadungure’s business empire.
In a statement earlier this week, his friends sought to quell wild rumours of witchcraft, cultic sacrifice and money-making snakes from Ghana.
“His success was not by accident,” the statement said, no pun intended. “We have resorted to conspiracy theories because we cannot comprehend how hard people can work.”
In interviews with ZimLive, however, some of Kadungure’s closest friends painted a picture of a troubled man who had quietly withdrawn from South Africa, where he thrived, fearing imminent arrest.
“He was hot in South Africa,” one said. “People don’t know about fuel. That’s what made him, and was almost about to undo him.”
The friend said Kadungure made about US$10 million in a fuel scam as part of a sophisticated criminal cabal.
“It was well-organised crime,” the friend noted. “There was no cult, or witchcraft. Genius was a clever thief, always prepared to risk everything.”
How the scam worked, the friend explained, was that Kadungure and his associates obtained fuel export permits. Armed with the documents, they acquired large quantities of petrol and diesel for export.
“Fuel for domestic consumption in South Africa attracts many taxes including excise duty, fuel levy and road accident fund levy. However, when the fuel is for export, the products are stripped of these taxes making them quite cheap,” the friend said, asking not to be named.
Instead of exporting the fuel, Kadungure and associates would sell it locally in South Africa.
“He would then take documents to the border where, through greasing the palms of corrupt officials, acquittals were done to give the pretence that the fuel left South Africa. Imagine a single tanker of fuel carries a product worth an average R300,000. Repeat this many times and you are printing money. So, erase everything else you have heard from your memory, this was Genius’ trade: fuel smuggling,” the friend added.
In the last few years, Kadungure moved his luxury vehicles to Zimbabwe from South Africa. Visits to Zimbabwe’s rich southern neighbour became less and less frequent over concerns of imminent arrest, friends said.
Fuel scams, the friends said, is the enterprise of so-called blessers who flaunt their wealth on social media while parading with beautiful, fame and fortune-seeking women known as “slay queens”.
Another of Kadungure’s friends explained: “The scams have many strands. There’s one particular Zimbabwean blesser whose social media pictures are a stark skin tone contrast between him and slay queens who is a member of the ‘Pipeline Mafia’.
“They are responsible for repeated breaches of a fuel pipeline running through Mpumalanga province where they siphon fuel and sell it. It’s almost 100 percent profit, although there’s the little matter of paying landowners where the theft takes place.”
In their statement, Kadungure’s friends – Chief Jose, Chief Albert, Brian Nyanyiwa, Ronald Muzambe, Dino Tumbare and Brighton Bako – said: “Many a business strategist will tell you that on the other side of fear is courage, innovation and great success. Genius did just that.”
Kadungure’s friends, it seems, all agree he had courage in a single-minded pursuit of getting rich – and very fast.
Girls came, fast cars, expensive alcohol – and recklessness.
“Countless nights we would leave the club drunk,” one of his girlfriends calling herself @Nicole_Viera wrote on Instagram. “I remember we would time ourselves and take 14 minutes from Dreams (night club) to the mansion (Domboshava home). Crazy!”
Kadungure’s nightclub bouncers told newspapers he often left the club at around 2AM – but on the fateful day he left shortly before 5AM after police made several attempts to shut the party down.
Other motorists have come forward to describe how Kadungure, who last posted a video while leaving home to “pop champagne”, flew past them in his US$600,000 motor as dawn broke.
He attempted to overtake two vehicles, ignoring an oncoming Honda Fit being driven by Lucky Chikwanda.
“My life flashed before my eyes. I saw a car trying to overtake two vehicles. The vehicle encroached into my lane at tremendous speed and I had no time to react. The vehicles collided and the other car veered off the road and smashed into a tree,” said Chikwanda.
The Rolls Royce Wraith caught fire shortly after. Kadungure, said witnesses, managed to extricate himself from the stricken vehicle and was dragged a short distance away. He quickly died.
Kadungure’s three other passengers were trapped in the mangled wreck, and the vehicle was soon on fire following what is described as a “small explosion”. Witnesses recounted the haunting screams of Moana, Limumba Karim and Elisha Adams as the flames engulfed them. Then deathly quiet.
Karim was a wanted fugitive in Malawi for his role in the biggest financial scandal in that country’s history. At the centre of the scandal was a computer-based financial information storage system. Some government officials and their criminal associates allegedly exploited a loophole in the system to siphon up to US$250 million from government coffers.
Adams, it emerged, was a model from Mozambique.
A large crowd watched as the charred remains of the three were retrieved. They were so badly burned DNA is going to be required, said police.
In death, many Zimbabweans have stopped interrogating the type of role model Kadungure was. To many, he was a funnyman who kept them captivated with his Instagram videos and showed them glimpses of a life of financial freedom many can only dream of. In his wake, however, there are many victims and broken families.
Moana’s sister revealed she was six-months pregnant and had just got engaged to a mystery man before her violent death.
“I never admired Ginimbi’s lifestyle, but I ended up faking it for the sake of my sister,” Tatenda Gudza told reporters. “He was someone possessed by some (evil) spirits. My sister was just a victim of … just imagine how their lives ended.”
