A helicopter carrying six people, including a close ally of Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa, crashed in the country’s east on Wednesday, leaving no survivors, officials have said.
The aircraft came down at about 5 PM local time near Waddilove Mission in Marondera district, east of the capital, Harare, Zimbabwean police said in a statement later the same day.
According to government spokesman Nick Mangwana, the helicopter was carrying a high-profile businessman, three other passengers and two pilots. “Current information indicates that there were no survivors in this crash,” Mangwana wrote on X, adding that police “will confirm the names of the victims in due course.”
State-owned newspaper The Herald identified businessman Wicknell Chivayo and his wife, Lucy Muteke, among the dead, citing a family spokesperson.
Chivayo founded Intratrek Zimbabwe, an energy and infrastructure company awarded the contract to develop the country’s 100-megawatt Gwanda solar project. He was a prominent supporter of Mnangagwa and the ruling ZANU-PF party. He visited the president at his rural home on New Year’s Day this year and joined him during a meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at Mnangagwa’s private farm in May.
Kenyan President William Ruto also confirmed the couple’s deaths in a condolence message on X on Thursday, describing Chivayo as “a dear friend whose warmth touched many people.”
“I will remember him for his friendship, his energy and his deep conviction in the possibilities of our continent,” Ruto said. He extended condolences to the victims’ families, President Emmerson Mnangagwa and the people of Zimbabwe.
The crash is the latest in a series of aviation accidents in the southern African nation. On April 23, 2021, an Air Force helicopter struck a house during a training flight in Arcturus, about 30 kilometers east of Harare, killing three crew members and a child on the ground. Another child and her mother suffered burns.
A helicopter scheduled to transport Mnangagwa crashed at Masvingo Airport on September 15, 2024, after experiencing what officials described as a technical fault. The president was not aboard, and no fatalities were reported.
Other southern African countries have also recorded such accidents, some involving senior officials. A helicopter crash near Danielskuil in neighboring South Africa’s Northern Cape killed all three aboard in October 2025. Malawi’s Vice President Saulos Chilima and eight others died in a military plane crash in the country’s mountainous north in June 2024. Zambia’s Vice President Mutale Nalumango and all other passengers and crew escaped injury in a military helicopter takeoff accident at Nakonde on July 9 this year.
The cause of Wednesday’s crash has yet to be established. Zimbabwe’s Air Force has previously complained of an aging fleet, saying Western sanctions had hampered purchases of replacement aircraft, Reuters reported after the fatal 2021 crash.
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