A flashpoint for international tension

The president’s nieceCentral to Angel’s gold-for-dirty money operations is Henrietta Rushwaya, president of the Zimbabwe Miners Association. Rushwaya, who is also President Mnangagwa’s niece, told Angel and the reporters on a phone call that smuggling 100kg of gold each week would be no problem.

The scheme would need an initial investment of $10mn of dirty cash into the government’s gold refinery, Fidelity. Of that, $5mn would be held in reserve by Fidelity for the duration of the scam, with the rest being used every week to buy gold.Once the gold is bought, another $5mn would be brought in to buy more gold until all the money had been laundered into the precious metal — which would then be sold internationally for legitimate, clean cash.Do you have information on money laundering or want to share another tip? Contact Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit on +974 5080 0207 (WhatsApp/Signal), or find other ways to reach out on our

“They can buy the gold directly in cash, because we are the only sector in the country that is paying in foreign exchange on a cash basis,” Rushwaya said during the call.During the meetings, Angel and Doolan, also a British pastor and music artist, said everything they were doing had the blessings of ‘number one’, referring to Mnangagwa. Doolan even offered to set up a face-to-face meeting with Mnangagwa on the sidelines of the COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow in 2021.

The gang also offered to help launder money by building properties near the tourist town of Victoria Falls. This, Angel said, would be appreciated by Mnangagwa because it would allow him “to cut a ribbon”, and build his legacy as a leader who brought visible infrastructure investments into Zimbabwe.

“A politician wants to open something,” Angel told Al Jazeera’s undercover reporters. “Gold is easy, but there is nowhere to cut a ribbon.”So we ate cold food for suhoor and saved the fire for iftar.

After bakeries shut down due to the gas shortage last month, reliance on fire increased – not just for our family but for everyone. Many people built makeshift clay ovens or fires in alleyways or between tents to bake loaves of bread.Thick, black smoke hangs heavy in the air – not the smoke of death from missiles, but the smoke of life that kills us slowly.

Each morning, we wake up coughing – not a passing cough, but a deep, persistent, choking cough that rattles through our chests.Then, my brother and I walk to the edge of our neighbourhood, where a man sells wood from the back of a cart. He gathers it from bombed-out buildings, fallen trees, broken furniture, and the ruins of homes and schools.