Harare, Zimbabwe (Minority Africa) —
In the heart of Mbare Township, Harare’s poorest and most populated slum, there is a new and menacing economy emerging.
“It’s the drug trade and it’s on steroids,” says John Gwada, a community leader and pastor with the Zimbabwe Apostolic Church. Zimbabwe’s youth substance abuse crisis has skyrocketed from 43% in 2017 to 57% in 2019, and is believed to be much worse today, according to the Zimbabwe Civil Liberties and Drugs Network, a monitoring agency.
This new dark-street economy is built on the broken lives of Zimbabwe’s so-called “Lost Generation”—young adults born after 2000 who are the demographic most affected by the country’s dire unemployment crisis. In 2023, researchers, citing social workers and addiction specialists, reported that 43% of school-going youths were hooked on illicit substances ranging from crystal meth (locally known as mutoriro) to tainted cough syrups and imported cocaine.
“It’s a mess, kids abandoning school, some chasing their parents out of their homes, others selling all the household furniture just to buy the next supply and feed their cravings for mutoriro,” Gwada says.
But the real horror isn't just found in the “street bases,” where the drugs are sold in small sachets and makeshift beer bottles. It lies behind the immaculate, steel-wire fences of so-called “rehab boot camps” that claim to reform youths battling addictions, all for free.
Our investigation into Zimbabwe’s mushrooming “drug rehabilitation” hubs shows that they have become a cesspool of corruption and brutality, where politically connected elites have turned a public health crisis into a money-spinning racket.
At centres such as Matrix Rehabilitation Centre, which began working around 2021/2022, and the Angel of Hope Foundation, established in Harare in 2018, former detainees and their families allege that the road to sobriety involves cash bribes, military-style torture, unlawful detention, and the disregard of basic human rights.
The Lure
To a desperate parent such as Chipo Ganga*, watching her 17-year-old son waste away through mutoriro addiction, it didn’t take much to fall for the sleek adverts on TikTok and Facebook promoting Zimbabwe’s “drug rehab colleges.”
“I was desperate to save my teenage son in 2025, the rehab adverts looked godsend,” she says.
The advertisements promise “holistic therapy,” “psychological assessments,” and a path back to sanity, education, or employment for “saved youths.” In Zimbabwe, where the formal healthcare system has all but collapsed and only 18 psychiatrists reportedly serve a population of 17 million, these seemingly non-profit rehabilitation centres pose as the only remaining hope for parents whose children are addicted to crystal meth, cocaine, illicit alcohol, or other narcotics.
The Matrix Rehabilitation Centre, owned by Tafadzwa Chidawa, a politically connected former police officer who was acquitted in March last year of an unrelated US $20,000 fraud case, and Angel of Hope, a foundation headed by Zimbabwe’s First Lady, Auxillia Mnangagwa, are the most prominent of these so-called “rehab colleges.”
They claim to offer free or subsidised programmes lasting between one and three months to transform young people battling addiction into productive members of society.
But Matrix’s pitch extends beyond rehabilitation. In videos and advertisements reviewed by Minority Africa, the centre presents its programmes as a pathway to opportunities after participants leave, including education and travel abroad. Posts promote opportunities in countries including India and the United Arab Emirates, while others document participants obtaining visas and travelling overseas to study.
In one video posted in August 2026, Matrix celebrated a young woman receiving a visa to study abroad, before later chronicling her journey to India. The posts present such departures as evidence of what can follow the centre’s disciplinary programme.
Matrix has made varying claims about the success of its rehabilitation programme. In separate posts on social media, the centre has claimed success rates of 92% and 97%. The posts do not explain how Matrix defines “success,” the period over which participants are followed, or what data the figures are based on.
“The Matrix Rehabilitation Centre promised me that my 17-year-old son, who had abandoned first-year law school at the University of Zimbabwe, would abandon mutoriro in one month and return to university on his 18th birthday,” says Ganga, who asked that her surname be withheld out of fear of the ruthlessness of Zimbabwe’s secret police against whistleblowers.
She therefore gave permission for her son’s admission to the facility.
“They said he’d be counselled. But when the gates were closed, the torturous military drills began, he told me,” she says.
According to her son, each day began at 3 a.m. with inmates being doused in cold winter water before being forced to roll around in muddy backyards. Minority Africa found several videos on Matrix’s own Facebook page showing participants being doused with water during drills. They were made to slap fellow detainees and, in turn, receive five slaps across the face. Breakfast was served only at 3 p.m., followed by a light supper at 10 p.m.
“He slept for four hours a day and lost seven kilograms in one month,” she says.
At the same time, what had initially been presented as a free rehabilitation programme turned into a financial nightmare. According to Ganga, the owners demanded US$500, threatening to detain her son for six months if she failed to pay.
“I had no option but to sell my refrigerator and pay them,” she says.
The Zimbabwe Health Professions Authority, the country’s medical regulatory body, has publicly warned that most of the rapidly proliferating rehabilitation centres, including Matrix, are operating outside the law.
“Patients as young as 12 who are battling addiction are trapped in these fly-by-night ‘drug rehabs’ designed for profit, not paediatric care,” says Jigga Saro*, a former security guard who says he blew the whistle about Matrix to the Zimbabwe Republic Police before going into hiding after the centre’s owner was briefly arrested in 2025.
Bouncers moonlight as “Health Workers”
One of the most troubling aspects of these so-called “rehabs” is how they recruit their clients. Centres such as Matrix are allegedly employing private bouncers as snatch squads to seize troubled young people from the streets and forcibly transport them to their centres, says Irimayi Goto*, 22, a young mother who spent two months at the centre before her uncles in Australia secured her release by paying a US$900 “release fee.” Before her detention, Goto had struggled with alcohol and ecstasy addiction for three years.
These “muscle men” patrol the streets of Harare, she says, tricking suspected drug users into vehicles under the guise of taking them for medical check-ups or “youth empowerment” seminars. Once inside the gates of the “rehab colleges,” she alleges, coercion takes over. The “patients” are detained against their will.
“This isn't medical treatment, it’s abduction,” she says.
According to Goto, the motivation behind these forced detentions is not clinical care but financial gain. Families are allegedly charged anywhere from US$400 and US$800 a month while their children are detained in the camps.
For operators such as Matrix, the sums can be substantial. A previous investigation by NewsHub reported that Matrix enrolled about 90 “offenders” each week and estimated that, based on its fees, the centre could generate as much as US$2.8 million annually.
Gwada says every troubled young person he knows who attended Matrix came out worse than when they entered.
Inside the “Boot Camp”
Once “enrolled,” escapees allege that the daily routine resembles prison life far more than addiction treatment.
“It didn’t matter whether it was winter or summer. We were woken up from brief sleep for roll calls, tiring drills and forced singing,” Goto says.
Among the punishments, she says, was “air seating”—holding a squatting position for 30 minutes or longer—or “frog marching” across a dusty yard.
Some leaked videos from these camps appear to support the claims of former detainees. In some footage, inmates are seen being splashed with freezing water during winter while fully clothed and forced to stand motionless as fellow inmates, egged on by staff, mock them.
“Beatings were the order of the day,” she says. “It was as if we were being whipped for committing a crime.”
The relentless drills took a toll on her health, leaving her dizzy and on the verge of fainting. Showing any sign of weakness, she says, would invite a beating with a water pipe. There were no addiction specialists, no doctors and no nurses as promised on admission.
“Only big men with big muscles mocking and whipping us,” Goto says. “We were told we are useless to our families and the country for being hooked on drugs. If we complained strongly, they threatened to send us to die in the Ukraine-Russia war.”
The most disturbing aspect of the boot camps, according to Chipo Ganga, involved what was presented as medical procedures. Her 17-year-old son told her that blood samples were taken and strands of hair collected for testing to detect traces of cocaine. Videos posted by some of the centres themselves, purportedly to show patients’ “progress,” do show such medical procedures being carried out.
Matrix has described its approach to addiction treatment as “non-pharmacological.” In a previous interview, Chidawa said the centre uses intensive physical activity as part of its detoxification process.
That approach is also promoted in testimonials on Matrix’s social media pages. In one video reviewed by Minority Africa, a former participant describes undergoing extensive physical training during detox rather than receiving medication. “There is no, like, medicine for detox,” he says. “You use your own body to clean your own body.”
The former participant says psychologists and social workers at Matrix helped him through the process and credits exercise with helping him regain some of the physical fitness he had lost while using drugs. But he also contrasts the programme’s approach with medication, saying that “using medicine doesn’t deal with the mental issues.”
Medical experts say the distinction is not so straightforward.
“This is an egregious violation of Zimbabwe’s Medicines and Allied Substances Control laws,” says a physician at Parenyatwa Hospital, Zimbabwe’s largest referral hospital, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals. “This is dangerous territory, botched bloodworks could severely harm inmates. Dabbling in unscientific, harmful ‘therapies,’ like forced fasting and prolonged solitary confinement, is outright risky and criminal.”
While Matrix boot camp has faced allegations of brutality, the Angel of Hope Foundation, whose patron is Zimbabwe’s First Lady, Auxillia Mnangagwa, represents a different facet of the crisis.
Unlike the accounts Minority Africa heard about Matrix, Ethan Soko*, 24, does not describe bouncers snatching suspected drug users from the streets. The University of Zimbabwe dropout, whose addiction to codeine-based cough syrup derailed his accounting studies, alleges a different problem at the First Lady’s rehabilitation centre: a “pay-to-play” system.
According to Soko, wealthy families pay hefty bribes to secure spots for their troubled children, jumping the queue ahead of destitute youth like him from townships and slums who can’t afford private rehabilitation.
“I was hooked on codeine cough syrup for five years when I was offered a place at the First Lady’s boot camp for a three-month programme in November. I was thrilled,” he says.
On the day he was due to enroll, however, Soko says his spot was cancelled indefinitely without explanation. He says guards later told him that the teenage son of a wealthy lawmaker had paid to take his place. He was gutted, he says. Since then, he has become depressed and begun drinking in addition to using codeine.
Soko’s account echoes allegations made in NewsHub’s earlier investigation into the centre. In 2025, the publication reported that another mother said her son lost his place at the free rehabilitation facility after a family paid a bribe to move ahead of him on the waiting list. Angel of Hope did not respond to the publication’s questions about the allegation.
Police apathy
The Zimbabwean government’s response to these camps has been lacklustre, says Ancelimo Magaya, an outspoken cleric. While the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) claimed to be “investigating” these illegal rehabilitation “boot camps,” no tangible crackdown or prosecution has occurred, he says.
“Everything has been a show, like always,” Magaya adds.
The owner of Matrix Rehabilitation Centre was briefly arrested in March 2025 on allegations of operating an unlawful rehabilitation facility and impersonating child protection officers. He was subsequently released. The Zimbabwe Republic Police ignored requests for comments on why critics say they are soft on powerful figures running allegedly illegal rehabilitation centres.
The Zimbabwean Ministry of Health has expressed what it describes as “concern”, yet, according to Soko, its hands are effectively tied when such boot camps are linked to powerful people in politics and members of state security.
“These are not drug rehab centres,” Soko says. “They are extortion camps using dubious methods to instill fear in youths struggling with addictions.”
Zimbabwe is a signatory to both the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both of which explicitly prohibit arbitrary detention and torture.
Dr Serena Chachuaio, a clinical psychiatrist in private practice in Maputo, Mozambique, who served as an external consultant to Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Health between 2013 and 2014, describes the crisis unfolding in Zimbabwe as deeply chilling.
“What is happening in these ‘rehab boot camps’ is not just a violation of human rights; it is a fundamental, dangerous distortion of medical science that will inevitably worsen the very trauma it claims to cure,” she says.
From a clinical standpoint, she explains, treating substance use disorder (SUD) through military-style punishment, sleep deprivation and physical abuse is fundamentally counterproductive. Addiction is a chronic neurobiological disease, often deeply intertwined with trauma, self-medication, and a lack of socio-economic prospects.
“Introducing severe physical and psychological trauma, such as ‘air seating,’ ‘frog marching,’ and forced public humiliation, does not ‘cure’ a craving,” Chachuaio says. Instead, it spikes cortisol levels, exacerbates underlying post-traumatic stress disorder and destroys any remaining sense of self-worth.
When these youths are inevitably released, she says, their baseline psychological pain will be higher, drastically increasing the risk of a fatal overdose or a severe relapse.
Chidawa dismissed claims that his centre is illegal and subjects detainees to torture.
“That’s nonsense,” he says. “We never hold anyone against their will. Our methods are humane. Some [of the drill] videos you see are AI and fake. Our operations are within the law, and families are thrilled that we have changed their kids for the better.”
Chidawa did not specify which videos he claimed were AI-generated. Minority Africa compared the footage reviewed for this investigation with other videos posted by Matrix and found several corresponding details, including the same military-style drills, training environments, and Matrix-branded shirts.
Minority Africa also analyzed the footage using multiple AI-video detection tools; none classified the videos as AI-generated, though such tools cannot conclusively establish a video’s authenticity.
Requests for comments sent to the Angel of Hope Foundation, chaired by Zimbabwe’s First Lady, went unanswered.
Edited/Reviewed by Kenneth Awom and Uzoma Ihejrika.