The convenient myth of ‘kufurira’: Why it is time to end the culture of blaming others for our own failures

Tendai Ruben Mbofana

There is a deeply entrenched narrative in our society that routinely surfaces whenever an individual from a prominent family, a respected household, or a position of privilege stumbles into scandal, addiction, or criminality. 

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It is the age-old defense of ‘kufurira’—the insistence that a fundamentally good, innocent person was somehow led astray, corrupted, or manipulated by a wicked external force. 

We saw this familiar script unfold recently in the sensational saga involving twenty-two-year-old Kelsea Tadiwa Tafirenyika and her husband, thirty-nine-year-old Collins Mnangagwa. 

As reports emerged of heavy narcotics, forged identities, siphoned millions, and intensive rehabilitation trips to Belarus, the primary narrative pushed to the public was one of betrayal.

A young woman accused of corrupting a president’s son, destroying his life, and draining his fortune while he lay incapacitated.

It is a dramatic, captivating tale. 

It is also an insulting piece of social fiction.

This saga is merely the most high-profile manifestation of a deeply entrenched habit in our society: the reliance on what the Shona call ‘kufurira’. 

Whenever an individual stumbles into scandal, addiction, or criminality, we reach for this age-old defense, insisting that a fundamentally good person was somehow led astray, corrupted, or manipulated by an external actor. 

But we must ask the uncomfortable question: is ‘kufurira’ ever a genuine explanation for human misconduct, or is it merely a cowardly shield for our refusal to take responsibility for our own choices and those of our loved ones?

Growing up, almost all of us experienced the ritual of parental vetting. 

Our parents closely scrutinized our friends, desperately hunting for a potential ‘anofurira’—a bad influence who might drag their child into rebellion or ruin. 

Conversely, our friends’ parents were doing the exact same thing, eyeing us as potential corruptors of their own children. 

In childhood and early adolescence, when minds are still forming and peer pressure carries neurodevelopmental weight, this caution is understandable. 

Yet, this entire culture of vetting rests on a fundamentally flawed premise. 

Are we really to say that human beings are such weak creatures, possessed of such feeble willpower, that we can be so easily influenced by those around us to do bad things?

To blame ‘kufurira’ is to ignore the obvious truth about human nature. 

People are not passive, helpless vessels waiting for someone else to fill them with wickedness. 

More often than not, an individual who engages in wrong behavior was already inclined toward it. 

Those blamed for being a bad influence were merely part of who that person already was, or they simply aided in what the individual was already doing. 

It is far more often a union of mutual preference. 

The moral weakness, the obsession with excess, and the disregard for law were not magically implanted into an innocent soul by a predatory partner. 

They were already there. 

The partner was not the creator of the vice, but merely a mirror and a co-actor in a lifestyle that both individuals willingly chose to inhabit.

The bad influence does not create the vice from thin air; they merely provide an environment where pre-existing inclinations can freely manifest.

Do we not have the saying: birds of a feather flock together? 

When two people come together in destructive behavior—such as a man marrying a woman who is into drugs—it is foolish to claim one corrupted the other. 

Would we be wrong to conclude that both were already into drugs before they even met, and that their shared addiction was likely a major factor bringing them together in the first place? 

Social psychology calls it homophily—the undeniable truth that people bond over pre-existing shared inclinations, values, and habits. 

When a person aligns themselves with someone involved in illicit narcotics, reckless extravagance, or criminal enterprises, it is rarely a case of innocent entrapment. 

This brings us to the sheer absurdity of how ‘kufurira’ is invoked in high-profile scandals. 

How exactly does a twenty-two-year-old ‘furira’ a thirty-nine-year-old adult? 

A man in his late thirties possesses complete legal autonomy, access to immense resources, and nearly four decades of life experience. 

The notion that a mature adult could be hypnotized, controlled, or led astray by someone almost two decades his junior stretches credulity to its absolute limit. 

It infantilizes a mature adult, stripping him of all moral agency simply to protect a family brand.

It is a ridiculous narrative constructed solely to strip a powerful individual of moral agency, sanitize a family brand, and evade public accountability.

​It is time for parents to stop faulting others for their children’s behavior. 

Children, too, must be expected to take responsibility for their choices rather than being handed a ready-made excuse by protective parents. 

When a child or an adult offspring makes wrong choices, the blame belongs squarely on those choices, or on the parents themselves for how they raised that child. 

Worse still, this obsession with blaming external corruptors robs individuals of the very thing essential for human growth: accountability. 

True moral maturity requires standing in the wreckage of your own decisions and admitting, “I did this.” 

When society constantly builds an altar of victimhood for individual who make bad choices, we remove any incentive for personal reform. 

If every addiction is someone else’s fault, if every siphoned dollar was stolen by an evil genius, and if every moral failure is the result of being “misled,” then the perpetrator remains forever a child, insulated from the sobering reality of cause and effect.

It allows parents to avoid looking in the mirror and asking what values were actually instilled behind closed doors, or why their offspring lacked the moral backbone to reject self-destruction.

Using ‘kufurira’ as a scapegoat only fosters a culture of national denial and enables a total refusal to accept the consequences of our actions.

We must finally take full, unreserved responsibility for who we are and who we have become. 

We possess willpower, intellect, and the capacity to choose between right and wrong every single day. 

True moral maturity requires standing in the wreckage of our own decisions without pointing fingers at those around us. 

It is time we stopped blaming others for ‘kufurira’ our children.

We must retire this convenient myth once and for all, and placed accountability exactly where it belongs: on the individual who looked at a destructive path and chose to walk it.

The concept of ‘kufurira’ serves as our ultimate psychological escape hatch. 

It allows parents, families, and society at large to preserve an illusion of moral purity while dumping the entire burden of guilt onto a convenient outsider. 

• Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to contact him on +263715667700 or mbofana.tendairuben73@gmail.com