Opinion: When political capital becomes a livelihood

By Dr Shame Mugova

Zimbabweans have a familiar expression for politicians who discover life after power: “It is cold out there.” We usually say it when someone loses office, disappears from the motorcade and, before long, stories emerge that they want to return to the party. But perhaps we should take the expression more seriously. Why should life outside politics be so cold?

Some politicians entered public life with professions. They were engineers, lawyers, farmers, accountants or businesspeople. Yet losing political office can appear to create not merely a political problem, but an economic one. Politics can stop being public service and become a livelihood.

There is a useful distinction between productive capital and political capital. Productive capital is what continues producing value when nobody important answers your telephone call. It is the farm that produces, the business with customers, the lawyer with clients, the engineer whose expertise remains valuable, or the investment generating income whether its owner is politically connected or not.

Political capital is different. It is access, influence, relationships, information and proximity to decision makers. The problem begins when access starts paying better than production.

Imagine someone becoming an MP at 40 after spending fifteen years as an engineer. Initially, politics is temporary. Then he becomes deputy minister, later minister, then a senior party official. Five years become ten. Ten become twenty. The qualification remains, but the career underneath it may slowly disappear.

Technology changes, former colleagues retire and younger engineers accumulate current experience. At the same time, another asset is appreciating: the political network. The former engineer now knows ministers, regulators, bankers and executives. People return his calls and believe he can open doors.

The strange result is that a person can become more powerful while becoming less independent. His professional capital may be depreciating while his political capital is appreciating. Eventually politics is no longer something he does. Politics is what he does.

Finance teaches us not to place everything in one investment, yet a career politician can gradually place almost an entire adult life into one asset. Income becomes political, status becomes political, networks become political and the future becomes political.

Political capital can also lose value quickly. A farm does not stop producing because its owner loses an internal party contest. A qualification does not disappear after a Cabinet reshuffle. Political influence is different.

Yesterday people wanted your number because you were the minister. Today someone else is the minister. Yesterday your telephone call represented access. Today people want your successor’s number. Yesterday people looked at you and saw tomorrow. Today they may see yesterday.

This is why losing a government position and losing one’s place inside the political system can be very different events. One may mean losing a job. The other may mean losing an economic ecosystem.

Remaining inside the party can therefore have value even without government office. Another ministry may come, another parliamentary seat or political rehabilitation. Being outside Cabinet may mean, “Not today.” Being completely outside the political system may begin to mean, “Maybe never.”

Walter Mzembi is useful because his life before politics complicates the stereotype of somebody who never had another profession. He trained as an engineer and had professional engineering credentials before entering Parliament. Yet after years in Parliament and Cabinet, most Zimbabweans came to know him principally as a politician. A profession can remain on the biography long after politics has become the occupation.

There is another category altogether: the lifetime politician. President Emmerson Mnangagwa once said he had known no other life except politics from the age of 17 and had never worked for anyone except “the people and the party”. Whatever one’s political view of him, the statement raises an economic question. What does retirement mean to somebody whose adult occupational life has overwhelmingly been politics? Politics was not a temporary departure from working life. Politics was the working life.

Zimbabwe is also showing us the reverse journey. A successful businessman can accumulate substantial productive capital and then move deeper into formal politics. Kudakwashe Tagwirei was already one of Zimbabwe’s most prominent businesspeople before his co-option into ZANU PF’s Central Committee in 2025.

That raises the opposite question. Can productive capital remain independent of political capital?

There is nothing inherently wrong with businesspeople entering politics. The test is whether the business remains a business when political circumstances change. Would it still have customers, compete and generate returns if another government came tomorrow?

A strong business should depend more on customers than connections.

That matters where the state has substantial influence over economic opportunity. Government buys goods and services, awards contracts, regulates industries, controls public enterprises and allocates public resources. The closer economic opportunity sits to the state, the more valuable access to the state can become.

This is not simply a morality problem. It is an incentive problem. People invest where the returns are. If knowing the right person produces a greater return than knowing the right skill, people will invest in relationships.

A country gets into trouble when cultivating the right relationship begins producing a higher return than cultivating the right skill.

The consequences do not stop with politicians. Young people, businesspeople and professionals observe the system. The graduate begins asking, “Who can connect me?” before asking, “What can I build?” The entrepreneur spends more time looking for access than looking for customers. Politics then changes character. Instead of productive citizens temporarily entering the state to serve, people can begin to see the state itself as the most valuable economic opportunity.

That same incentive problem may help explain another Zimbabwean contradiction. We seem to have an extraordinary appetite for good cars, even where our appetite for good roads appears weaker.

This is not an argument that politicians, chiefs or public officials should never have reliable vehicles. The public finance question is different: what else could the same resources have done?

In 2024, Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube told Parliament that excess expenditure by the Council of Chiefs arose partly from the unbudgeted procurement of 237 vehicles for chiefs. He defended them as necessary tools of trade. Perhaps they are necessary. But every dollar spent has another life it could have lived.

A car has political characteristics that a road does not. A vehicle has an identifiable recipient. Someone receives the keys and knows where the benefit came from. A road belongs to everyone. The farmer, kombi driver, ambulance, business and ordinary motorist all benefit, but nobody personally receives the road.

The car can create gratitude. The road creates productivity. The car can strengthen a relationship. The road strengthens an economy.

Bad roads themselves also create an argument for better vehicles. The ordinary motorist wants the pothole repaired. The powerful traveller may simply need a vehicle capable of surviving it. One solution repairs the public failure. The other protects an individual from it.

The pattern extends beyond roads. Poor electricity encourages solar. Poor municipal water encourages boreholes. Poor healthcare pushes those with means towards private hospitals. Each decision may be rational for the individual, but collectively they create a problem.

The people with the greatest ability to influence public services can become the people least exposed to their failure. The elite can gradually purchase private exits from public failure. The poor cannot.

A borehole solves my water problem, but not the city’s water problem. Solar solves my electricity problem, but does not repair the electricity system. An SUV protects my suspension, but does not repair the road.

This is why the response that politicians should simply have invested whatever money they earned misses the deeper argument. Where there is evidence of corruption, it should be investigated on its own facts. But the more fundamental question survives even if every dollar was earned legitimately.

What kind of capital did the person accumulate?

A mansion is wealth, but it does not necessarily generate income. A farm is productive capital only if it produces. Owning assets is not the same thing as owning sources of income.

The real test comes when political power is removed. Remove the title, the office, the party position and access to ministers. What remains that someone is still willing to pay for?

That may also be the wider test for the economy. Can an ordinary entrepreneur prosper without knowing anyone important? Can a company win customers without political access? Can a professional rise because of expertise rather than proximity? Can political office genuinely be temporary because there is a life worth returning to outside it?

Political capital mostly influences access to existing resources. Productive capital creates additional resources. Political capital can open a door. Productive capital builds what lies behind it.

No country becomes prosperous simply by becoming exceptionally good at allocating access to what already exists. Somebody must still produce.

The healthiest economy is not one in which nobody knows powerful people. It is one in which knowing powerful people is not a condition for economic success.

Perhaps the strongest sign that Zimbabwe has changed will be when leaving political office is no longer described as going into the cold. A minister will lose office, return to a profession, a farm, a business or ordinary retirement, and political departure will no longer feel like economic exile.

It will simply mean going back to life.

Dr Shame Mugova is a Lecturer in Finance at Birmingham City University. He writes on finance, economic policy, governance and development, with a particular interest in Zimbabwe and Southern Africa. He writes in his personal capacity.