“We will walk with you.”
Companions
Leadership accompaniment is the quiet architecture behind many successful leadership journeys.
One of the beautiful things about leading well and leaving well is that the departure can begin to feel like a honeymoon; a moment of celebration rather than loss.
After I announced that I would be stepping down from ZimRights, I had the privilege of travelling with the ZimRights leadership across the country, bidding farewell to our community. It was a deeply moving experience. Not merely because people said kind things, but because it gave me the opportunity to pay tribute to the comrades who had walked the journey with me.
During those visits, one question surfaced again and again:
“What was the secret to your success?”
The question triggered a series of reflections.
In my farewell message in November 2025, I attempted to answer that question.
“The success of my tenure was not of my doing. It was the miracle of leadership accompaniment; the community of love that formed itself around me to cover my weaknesses, shield my shortcomings, and exaggerate my capabilities. Leadership can be a lonely journey, but I never walked alone. There were giants in the shadows who refused to be named or seen. Yet they were there; opening paths, unlocking doors, finding solutions, and holding my hand. To this day, they refuse to take the credit. I was a lucky man. I was blessed.”
After reading that message, one brother reprimanded me gently:
“Young man, do not be modest about this. Take it. This is your moment to celebrate your good work.”
I appreciated the sentiment. But every word I wrote in that farewell message was true and I meant it.
Those who know the inside story know that this is the truth.
The work of turning around ZimRights was so difficult, and at times so frightening, that I occasionally wondered whether I had been set up for failure. When Abel stepped forward and said to me, “We will help you.” That moment changed everything.
From that day onward, people began knocking on the door, one by one, repeating the same words.
“We will walk with you.”
I will not forget the day I received a call from a colleague, who at the time was serving with one of the development partners.
I knew her and respected her deeply.
She said to me, “Congratulations. I hear you are now the National Director at ZimRights. I am coming to see you tomorrow at 2pm.”
By 2pm the following day, she was already seated at our reception, waiting like an ordinary visitor. She came into my office and we had a long conversation. That meeting marked the beginning of a special accompaniment relationship that has continued well beyond my time at ZimRights.
What touched me most was her humility. She made the first call. She came down to my very humble office. She simply showed up and said, in effect, I am here to walk with you.
This story would repeat itself many times with different characters.
Slowly, quietly, a powerful circle of companions began forming around me to do the heavy lifting of leadership.
At a later stage we formalised part of this community into a small group that we called Friends of ZimRights. The group would meet periodically to brainstorm, reflect, and support the turnaround journey.
But the companions on this journey went far beyond that group. They were people in different spaces who used their influence, their wisdom, and sometimes their reputation to support the work we were trying to do.
One practical example illustrates the power of accompaniment. At one point, ZimRights had been blacklisted by a group of donors. The decision caused serious reputational damage and closed many doors to opportunities. With one of the companions, we sat down in my office and spoke for long about what could be done. Another meeting took place at KFC at Westgate where we brainstormed on possible solutions. So many simple conversations with people who just care and expect nothing in return.
What followed was something I will never forget.
A group of fifteen senior executives in international development, including former ambassadors to Zimbabwe, came together and signed a letter pleading the ZimRights case. When I read the letter, for me it mattered not what the outcome would be. That simple act of solidarity gifted me a powerful surge of energy that carried me through those difficult times.
I believe that letter, together with other processes that were underway, played a significant role in the eventual removal of ZimRights from the blacklist. Not only was ZimRights removed from the blacklist, but in the same year the organisation went on to receive funding from that same funding partner.
This is what accompaniment looks like in practice. It is not merely encouragement. It is influence deployed on behalf of a leader who is carrying a difficult assignment.
There were many long nights when I would leave a difficult board meeting confused, discouraged, and sometimes deeply uncertain about the path ahead. Yet in those moments, my phone would be waiting on my desk with long voice notes of encouragement, wisdom, and practical advice. One such touching voice note came from Dr. Alex Magaisa. It would be his last message to me before his passing. In that message he spoke about his work with the BSR and the volume that we had just finished editing and were preparing to launch it the following Thursday. We spoke about what it would mean for many young leaders out there.
As fate would have it, we never launched that volume but that moment of accompaniment was very powerful and I hoped one day we would be able to create a platform were such leaders as Dr. Magaisa would make their wisdom available to many young leaders around the world so they would also not walk alone.
Apart from Dr. Magaisa, there were many other voices of accompaniment. I played these voices over and over again on the road during long trips to the field. These are leaders who were so far away from me in space, and yet were sitting with me in every difficult situation, sharing wisdom and knowledge.
When I started my leadership role, I had not received much formal training in leadership.
But during these accompaniment conversations, something shifted.
I began taking notes.
I began buying books.
I began studying leadership.
Slowly, almost unintentionally, I became a student again.
My library changed.
My thinking changed.
Looking back now, I can say with confidence that leadership accompaniment became a school of leadership for me. A different school in the sense that I never had to leave my work space. It was learning in the everyday journey of leading. I was not learning from strangers. I was learning from members of my leadership community who cared for me and the things I care about.
Many of us in civic leadership are what I would call the accidental leader. In fact that phrase came right out of an accompaniment session with a companion who said to me, ‘You know Dzi, we do not want leaders who lead through mystery.”
I found that very telling.
“If you lead through mystery, you will be unravelled. We want leaders who lead through art and science.”
What he was saying is very clear. Many of us civic leaders find ourselves in positions of leadership because of our activism, our commitment, or our credibility within movements. Yet we often arrive there without the leadership preparation that such responsibility demands. We must have the humility to know that our charming activism has its limits.
While formal training can help, it remains strictly limited. There are fellowships, executive programmes, and leadership courses that offer valuable tools. But my experience has taught me that something deeper is required.
Leading in what I call the action zone requires more than skills development. It requires a community that walks with you in the real time pressures of leadership. Every leader serving in the action zone needs an accompaniment circle.
A place to go when nothing seems to work.
People to call when the loneliness becomes overwhelming.
Champions to rely on when doors begin closing.
These are the people who raise your leadership lid, elevate your craft, and help you deliver Level 5 leadership.
And yet these are also the same people who, when the moment of transition arrives, will help you discern it. They are not in the periphery. They are what makes letting go possible. They help you discern that the hour is come. They help you understand that the assignment is changing.
It was during one accompaniment call with one of the Friends of ZimRights that the direction started to shift. After listening to me and sharing his reflections, he later sent me a voice note that signalled that the ground was shifting.
He said: “Babamudiki, I do not fully know what to make of this. But after our conversation I felt something in my spirit. You are entering a transition. You have done very well here. I think you must begin thinking about your next assignment.”
That message pierced me. At first, I was in denial. But the more I thought about it, the clearer the vision became. We began grappling with the idea of a next assignment.
During one of our conversations he recommended a book titled Half Time, and offered to send me a copy. Before he did so, I had already purchased the book and started reading it. I was struck by how powerfully the book spoke into my situation. It invited me to imagine serving in a different vineyard. After reading that book, I wrote down the mission for my next assignment:
Serving those who serve others.
I returned to the ZimRights transition plan that I had drafted in June 2022 and started reviewing it carefully. I called the National Chairperson so that we could begin thinking intentionally about the future.
In December 2024, I invited one of the development partners supporting ZimRights to have coffee with me. We met on Churchill Street. During that meeting I informed him that 2025 would be my final year with ZimRights. I thanked him for being one of the champions who had supported the turnaround journey.
He thanked me for my service.
We spent time discussing what a responsible transition might look like and the mechanisms that would need to be put in place. Toward the end of the meeting he asked. “And what is next for you?”
I responded honestly. “It is not yet entirely clear. But you know my story. For the past six years I have carried the burden of civic leadership. I know many leaders out there who are carrying similar burdens, sometimes under even more difficult circumstances. I succeeded here not because of my own talents. I succeeded because someone saw my struggle and stepped close enough to ask, How can I help? That simple question triggered a transformational journey of leadership accompaniment. If there was a way, I would want to become to other civic leaders what others became to me during my moment of need. I wish there was a mechanism that could support civic leaders as they navigate the difficult journey of leadership.”
Then he said something that would prove to be prophetic.
“I watched you going through that process. I believe this is exactly what our sector needs. When you figure out what that mechanism looks like, come back to me and we will see how we can support it.”
That conversation marked the beginning of a new journey.
It eventually led to the establishment of the Civic Leadership Institute (CLI), a Pan African platform designed to institutionalise leadership accompaniment. With more than forty three civic leaders from across the continent, we began designing what this platform could look like.
Slowly, the idea took shape.
Finally, on 5 March 2026, at the Lodge at Ancient City near the Great Zimbabwe, a World Heritage Site, a small gathering of civic leaders formally launched the Civic Leadership Institute. During that gathering we adopted the founding documents, elected the inaugural board, and I was tasked with a new assignment as the Chief Executive Officer of the Civic Leadership Institute.
Our goal in this new space is simple. We want to make the miracle of leadership accompaniment available to civic leaders across the African continent. So that no leader doing the important work of serving our communities will ever have to walk alone.
I believe that when a leader calls, no matter the hour or the circumstances, someone must always be available to pick up the call and walk with them in that moment. That is why we are building the Civic Leadership Institute.
That is what our sector needs today.
In the Picture: A New Mandate On March 6, 2026, Coach Ennie Chipembere—Chairperson of the CLI Steering Committee and co-host of the Civic Leadership Academy—presented me with a baton on behalf of the civic leaders who founded this institute.
As I stepped into this new mandate as the founding CEO, the founders gave me a powerful reminder that will become the heartbeat of my journey today,
just as in the past: this is stewardship. On my very first day in office, I was encouraged to begin thinking of my exit. In the Arena of civic leadership, the highest form of service is not maintaining control, but designing completion.