Strange things happen to people when they swim in power and privilege. It is as if morality evaporates in the boardroom air, and the most basic human decency is sacrificed at the altar of profit and ego.
I have spent more than 20 years navigating Zimbabwe’s corporate terrain, witnessing first-hand the terrifying ease with which powerful institutions rationalise cruelty — especially when it is cloaked in the language of balance sheets and economic survival.
One of the ugliest manifestations of this moral decay was on display last week at the Zimbabwe Association of Pension Funds (ZAPF) congress in Victoria Falls. There, amid polite applause and PowerPoint slides, a chilling proposal was made: that Zimbabwe must abandon its commitment to compensate pensioners who lost everything during the 2008 currency collapse. Just like that — erase up to US$5 billion in obligations, turn the page, and move on.
This was not a drunken bar conversation. It came from Livingstone Magorimbo, chief actuary at First Mutual Holdings. His logic was brutally simple: the pension industry does not have the money. So, why not just accept the loss?
No. That is not acceptable.
What Magorimbo is really proposing is a new chapter in a long, painful saga of betrayal — one where pensioners are told, once again, that their suffering must subsidise corporate failure and economic mismanagement.
Let’s remember what happened. In 2008, Zimbabweans who had spent decades saving for retirement woke up to find their nest eggs wiped out by hyperinflation. Their contributions had bought properties, shares, and income generating assets — but when the currency system collapsed, those assets were not liquidated and distributed. They simply vanished from pensioners’ accounts and reappeared in the portfolios of powerful institutions. The system moved on. The beneficiaries were left behind.
A decade ago, the Justice Smith Commission of Inquiry into pension losses told us exactly what had happened — and what must be done. It estimated that pensioners were owed US$5,1 billion, a staggering sum that exceeded Zimbabwe’s GDP at the time. Compensation was not just a matter of policy — it became a matter of justice. Yet nothing substantial has been done.
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Now, we hear calls to let the matter die quietly.
Magorimbo’s argument was cloaked in the language of realism. He invoked examples from Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela — countries that, faced with similar crises, ultimately chose not to reimburse pensioners. But those comparisons ignore a key point: Zimbabwe’s pensioners did not just lose money to inflation. They lost it to manipulation and opacity in a financial system that shifted wealth upward while shielding itself with actuarial jargon.
It is precisely this attitude — this cold detachment from the real lives behind financial losses — that has destroyed public confidence in Zimbabwe’s financial institutions. When systems extract from citizens but never deliver, people rightly stop trusting them. And when that trust collapses, the system eventually collapses too.
It is encouraging that the Insurance and Pensions Commission (Ipec), and many in ZAPF, see things differently. I recently discussed this with Commissioner Grace Muradzikwa, whose views — both in private and through her officials — suggest a commitment to seeing this issue through.
Her team understands the stakes. Pension funds are playing with fire, and Ipec must make it clear: abandoning compensation will be met with full regulatory force. The system is already fragile. Take away its last shred of moral credibility, and there will be nothing left to loot.
Let us be clear. What is being proposed is not fiscal prudence — it is moral cowardice. Magorimbo, and others who echo his sentiments, are asking Zimbabwe to legalise the expropriation of the vulnerable by the powerful. They argue that the funds are broke. Perhaps. But they are certainly not too broke to pay executive bonuses, and maintain luxury properties. The problem is not capacity — it is conviction.
It is not lost on us that Magorimbo also raised legitimate concerns. He spoke about defined contribution schemes, dangerously low monthly contributions, and the need for regulatory reform. These are important issues. But they cannot become the excuse to duck responsibility. Structural reform cannot come at the cost of historical justice.
The day our institutions abandon the weak for the sake of the comfortable is the day we cease to be a society worth defending.
The pension industry has a choice to make: restore dignity to those who built this nation — or join the long list of predators that fed on their pain.
