Chivayo’s ex-wife demands $25 million payout, 40k monthly maintanence
HARARE – Wicknell Chivayo’s former partner is demanding a $25 million lump sum payment, $40,000 a month in spousal maintenance and a fleet of luxury vehicles including three Rolls Royces as part of divorce proceedings, court papers reveal.
The shocking financial demands by Sonja Madzikanda were laid bare through an urgent chamber application in which Chivayo, the flamboyant businessman whose mysterious fortune has made him one of Zimbabwe’s most controversial figures, went to court to force access to their two minor children after accusing her of using the children as leverage to extract money from him.
The High Court’s Family Division withheld judgement as Chivayo seeks a provisional order granting him interim access to the children, a boy born in January 2018, and a girl born in March 2019.
Chivayo wants access on alternating weeks inclusive of weekends, half of each school holiday, alternating birthdays and alternating public and Christian holidays.
But the access dispute is only the most recent flashpoint in a far broader and more bruising legal war playing out in the High Court, in which Madzikanda has filed for divorce and laid claim to a substantial slice of Chivayo’s empire.
In previously unreported summons filed in January 2026 through Mahuni Gidiri Law Chambers, Madzikanda argues that the couple entered a valid customary law marriage on or about July 17, 2017, with lobola negotiated and paid.
She says the marriage, though unregistered, is governed by the Marriages Act and can only be dissolved by a competent court – meaning, she argues, that Chivayo’s payment of gupuro, a traditional divorce token, in early 2024 carried no legal weight.
On that basis, she is claiming the Matrimonial Causes Act applies in full, entitling her to an equitable share of assets accumulated during the union.
Her financial claims are extraordinary in scale. She seeks a once-off lump sum maintenance payment of $25 million, monthly spousal maintenance of $40,000 until she remarries, and an annual budget of $1 million for holidays and entertainment covering, her papers say, vacations, recreational activities and cultural experiences integral to the children’s upbringing and her own wellbeing.
She also wants Chivayo to service her motor vehicles twice a year.
She is also claiming sole and exclusive ownership of several immovable properties: a stand in Gletwyn Township, Unit 4 at Rikitayi Villas on Chisolme Road in Ballantyne Park, and a Johannesburg apartment at Davinci Suites in Sandton.
She is also seeking to be awarded seven vehicles from the marital estate – three Rolls Royces (a Spectre, a Ghost and a Phantom), a Range Rover, a V-Class Mercedes-Benz, a Mercedes-Benz Maybach and a Lexus SUV.
For the children’s maintenance, she is seeking full coverage of their educational costs from their current levels through to the completion of tertiary education, all extramural and sporting activities, uncapped Wi-Fi access, international medical insurance, and seasonal clothing allowances.
In her declaration, Madzikanda provides a sprawling inventory of what she alleges are matrimonial assets. Beyond the vehicles and properties she is claiming outright, she lists additional properties at 48 Lanark Road in Avondale, 14 Stonechat Lane in Greystone Park, and the Churchill Avenue property in Alexandra Park that serves as the registered address of Chivayo’s company Intratek ZW.
She also lists business interests in Intratek, WMC Trading, IMC Communications, Trintas Petroleum, and Eldo Pvt Ltd, and a private jet whose precise details, she acknowledges, are not known to her but which she believes is owned, controlled or regularly used by Chivayo.
She further seeks an order piercing the veil of the WMC Family Trust, arguing that assets held within it should be treated as Chivayo’s personal assets, or joint matrimonial assets, for the purposes of calculating the extent of the estate to be divided.
Madzikanda argues that the common estate was built by Chivayo’s commercial industry and her own thrift, and that neither could have succeeded without the other.
Chivayo, represented by Mpofu Mazhata Chambers, has filed a robust plea dismissing the financial claims as legally baseless and, in the bluntest of terms, extortionate.
His lawyers raise multiple preliminary objections, arguing the customary union was never registered within the 12 months required by the Marriages Act, and therefore carries legal validity only for the purposes of the children’s status, guardianship, custody and succession rights, not for spousal maintenance or division of assets.
They further argue that Madzikanda herself terminated the union by paying gupuro, extinguishing any residual entitlements, and that the parties’ estates were never put in community of property and no ante-nuptial contract existed.
The lawyers are contemptuous of the financial claims. Madzikanda, they argue, made no contribution to the acquisition of any of the assets she is now pursuing.
The assets, they say, are entirely the product of Chivayo’s own industry and investment. They describe the maintenance and asset claims as “frivolous and vexatious,” and pray that they be dismissed with costs on the punitive scale of legal practitioner and client “given the irresponsible and extortionist nature of the claim.”
On spousal maintenance specifically, Chivayo’s lawyers are unsparing: he has no obligation to maintain a woman who voluntarily terminated the union. She is an adult, they say, who must support herself from her own resources.
“Defendant is not her meal-ticket for life,” Chivayo’s lawyer Silvester Hashiti argues in court papers.
On custody, Chivayo concedes that the children should remain primarily with Madzikanda, but only in exchange for a reasonable and court-regulated access regime that is, as his lawyers put it, “not subject to plaintiff’s whims and caprices.”
It is on that access question that matters turned most acutely urgent. In his founding affidavit supporting the chamber application, Chivayo swears that Madzikanda has systematically denied him access to their children on every occasion he has attempted to exercise his parental rights, and that access is only ever granted after she makes what he characterises as extortionate monetary demands.
He identifies the most recent denial as occurring on February 28, 2026. The denial, he says, has extended to blocking telephone contact, withholding school information and preventing him from attending the children’s school and social events.
His certificate of urgency, signed by Brighton Pabwe of Venturas and Samukange Attorneys, argues the children – both under 10 years – are at critical developmental stages that require the active presence of both parents. The ongoing denial, the certificate warns, risks parental alienation, a gradual and potentially irreversible process of emotional estrangement.
“Lost birthdays, milestones and daily interactions are irrecoverable,” Chivayo’s affidavit states. “The prejudice is ongoing and cumulative
Chivayo, who is now remarried to Lucy Muteke since March 2025, says no court order lawfully restricts his contact with the children, that he has a clean record with no history of abuse or neglect, and that he remains financially and emotionally committed to their welfare.
He is seeking access on alternating weeks including weekends, half of all school holidays, alternating birthdays, and first right of access on the children’s birthdays and major public holidays.
The matter is pending.
_ZimLive_
