Who propped whom: Masiyiwa vs Nyambirai?

A friend who knows about my legal battle with Zimbabwe’s richest man, Strive Masiyiwa, way back in the 1990s when he sued by publication, The Insider, recently sent me an undated story by Fanuel Viriri entitled: Strive Masiyiwa was broke; Nyambirai offered free legal aid in Econet case.

What struck me was the intro that read: When lawyer Tawanda Nyambirai first met Strive Masiyiwa, the man who would become Zimbabwe’s richest billionaire entrepreneur was flat broke.

He had spent his entire fortune in a bruising legal battle with the government to licence Econet……….

I was immediately put off by the story because Nyambirai did not first meet Masiyiwa during the Econet case.

Nyambirayi (as spelt on my court papers) represented Strive Masiyiwa’s first company Retrofit, when that company sued me as editor and publisher of The Insider some three or so years before the Econet case.

My case came to court in July 1994,  three years after Retrofit had sued my paper, which was then published as a monthly. This was only my third issue. I refused to settle out of court and I was vindicated. I won the case with costs.

So when I read the story, I wondered: Did the reporter get his facts wrong, or was Nyambirai rewriting his own history where he was the hero and not the struggling young lawyer who had represented Masiyiwa and lost?

Nyambirai is, of course, not alone. Masiyiwa himself usually does not talk about his days at Retrofit, which was one of the biggest beneficiaries of government tenders.

Rich people usually do that in what is called revisionism.

So who propped whom?

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