“I’m bull-scores in bed and business,” Bhuru told Pathisani, a TV host, during his interview on the Zimbabwe national television channel.
He was bragging about his prowess in impregnating women and pulling big harvests at his Lion’s Den tobacco farm. All his children were born of different moms. Bhuru was cocky and pompous and a single father of 25 kids. Bhuru had gone through it all—being a lawmaker in Zimbabwe’s parliament, a national team football coach, a national rugby team coach, a tobacco farmer, and a former thief in England. His pictures went viral on social media showing him driving a minibus with his 25 kids on a family road trip from Zimbabwe into South Africa.
“Do you know them all by name?” Pathisani asked Bhuru.
“The kids?” Bhuru replied.
“Yes, minus the mums,” Pathisani said, tapping the Samsung studio mike to capture the full vocal chords of Bhuru’s pompous voice.
He knew all his kids just by staring at their eyelids, he told Phathisani. Each child had their own trust fund, and all of them had lived under the same roof with their siblings from an early age.
“The boys do homework together—the girls have been asked to use the Bhuru surname even when we marry them off—that way no daughter of mine forgets his father’s family,” he said.
Bhuru was emphatic in his boast about his busload of kids. When Tsuro, his wealthy uncle, posted on X that he had dumped his wife because he couldn’t bear him a son, Bhuru casually joked in the comments sidebar, “Sekuru Tsuro—aunt needs a Bhuru of a man; you failed your manly duties.” Even in parliament he would lose decorum and brag about his “baby mamas,” who lived in Zimbabwe, Australia, Dubai, and South Africa. His big homestead included a farm and 7000 cattle (mostly said to be stolen from a white Zimbabwean commercial farmer whose property he grabbed).
“My wealth needs many heirs,” Bhuru would boast.
In shorts, on YouTube Reels, Bhuru would be seen cavorting with his teenage sons around the cattle kraal. Teaching his boys how to milk the cattle, repair the wooden pens, immunize new calves, and weigh the hoofs of the bulls slated for the butcher’s knife. He liked to present himself as an “alpha” man, the kind of overconfident, non-Western African masculine man. It was therefore no surprise that Bhuru eventually quit his parliament job and relocated to Hurungwe in west-central rural Zimbabwe to become a tribal chief. He became the ruler of 60,000 Kore Kore people in that region.
Bhuru continued to be pompous as a tribal chief. Though the rules didn’t allow it, he would give a directive for his four teenage sons to adjudicate tribal disputes in his absence.
“When you see my son, you have seen the future tribal chief,” he would warn elderly men who were 30 years older than him.
“But the rules say teenage boys, even if they are from a royal bloodline, can’t preside over legal matters,” Sorojena, a 65-year-old tribal court aide, once warned Bhuru.
Bhuru looked at Sorojena and tapped his shoulder with a light clap.
“My boys are me; I am them. They’re kings. I am not responsible for your lack of sons,” he replied and mocked Sorojena, saying that he was a father of six girls and did not have even one son.
“How disappointing,” he added.
Sorojena stared at them, drawing patterns in the soil with his toes, and was not able to hide the hurt in his eyes.
“My apologies, your Highness,” he said.
“You must,” nodded Bhuru.
Bhuru’s 25 kids eventually became a financial headache despite his prowess as a tribal chief, former lawmaker, and farmer. The mother of his two last sons was fed up. She had gone for six months without receiving money from him. She was livid, believing that Bhuru cared for his first twenty-three kids more than the last two.
“My kids are the least of your priorities—you love the other twenty-three so much,” she mocked him during a confrontation.
“Twenty-three?” asked Bhuru.
His “baby mama,” like others, only bore him kids but never married him. She cleared her throat and touched Bhuru’s chest with her middle finger.
“If they are really your kids, you’ll make a money plan,” she said, walking away.
“Wait,” said Bhuru, breathing fast—his shoulders restless. “I want a DNA test,” he demanded.
After two months, Bhuru finally gathered the mums of his kids to check the paternity of all his kids for the first time and was in his usual boasty mood. He declared that the laboratory results will confirm that all 25 were his biological children and that the DNA test results would prove his “high fertility.” The lab results were ugly. Of all Bhuru’s 25 kids, all the boys were not biologically his. Only the girls were his. Bhuru did not take the matter well. He fainted before going mad and spending thirty weeks in the Harare Hospital psychiatry ward.
