The founder of Sayari Dunia Sustainable Tourism Foundation, Dr. Abigail Olagbaye, has vehemently condemned the maltreatment that the Zimbabwe authority subjects the erstwhile minister of Tourism in the country, Dr. Walter Mzembi to, as being reported after years of meritorious service to his father land.
Dr. Olagbaye who is highly depressed about the current health condition of the former minister while expressing her displeasure described his condition as very pathetic, urging the Zimbabwe’s President to have a rethink saying Walter Mzembi is more than a mere citizen and deserves to be accorded respect considering his antecedents irrespective of what might have transpired.
The report reads:
In 2012, Walter Mzembi was the friendly, youthful-looking face of Zimbabwe’s Minister of Tourism, who also proudly and with dignity represented his country around the world as its Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. Respected also in countries that put sanctions against Zimbabwe, this Zimbabwe hero today is fighting for his life in a prison hospital, chained to his bed and allegedly slowly poisoned, abandoned by his country he loved so much.
After years in exile and fighting for his health, Dr. Walter Mzembi was invited by his president to come back home for a conversation on how to move on – but was arrested at Harare International airport on June 14, 2025, instead. An internationally recognized travel and tourism leader, a tourism hero, and a true patriot is a broken man, deadly sick, fighting for his life in a Harare prison hospital.
Mr. Mzembi devoted most of his life to making Zimbabwe a welcoming country, a tolerant nation that loves its visitors as guests. He understood the importance of tourism as both an economic driver and a means of building a positive image. All this may now be questioned by tourism leaders around the world, with whom Mr. Mzembi took decades to build trust.
Former Zimbabwean Dr. Walter Mzembi was the longest-serving Minister of Tourism in Africa and also served as Minister of Foreign Affairs. He served his country with passion for many years, and yes, he was a contender in politics with the current president of the country.
Allegedly, at the most successful tourism event ever hosted in Zimbabwe in 2013, the UNWTO General Assembly, he donated video screens used at the UNWTO event and a FIFA event in 2010 to a church. This was his crime; he had been arrested after the overthrow of the Mugabe regime.
It forced Mzembi to flee to South Africa, where he got ill and was hospitalized, because he was also alleged to have been poisoned in Zimbabwe, according to some inside information leaked and kept confidential by this publication.
Mr. Mzembi had been living in Eswatini, South Africa, and Zambia in the aftermath of the 2017 military-assisted political transition, which saw Mugabe deposed and replaced by then-Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
In a 2012 news report by Zimbabwe Herald, reports about what everyone said about the “beloved youthful looking minister of tourism”, Walter Mzembi, who was seen as the friendly face of this beautiful Southern African country all around the globe.
Today, Walter Mzembi is a broken man. His president and his country have disrespected him, and this is met with disbelief around the global tourism world. He is fighting for his life at Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals after collapsing while in custody at Harare Remand Prison.
Award-winning journalist Hopewell Chin’ono shared the update on Friday, 1 August 2025, stating that Mzembi is seriously ill with an enlarged heart and swollen feet. According to Chin’ono, prison officials confirmed that the former minister collapsed last week inside the remand facility.
