daniel chigunwe
Wallace Ruzvidzo
Herald Reporter
ZIMBABWEANS are capable of spearheading game-changing first-of-a-kind innovations that challenge the world’s traditional ways of doing things, President Mnangagwa has said.
The President said this yesterday when Zimbabwean innovator and inventor Mr Maxwell Chikumbutso paid a courtesy call on him at State House in Harare to showcase his latest invention of the world’s first self-powering vehicles and motorbikes that run on radio waves.
Such inventions, said President Mnangagwa, were testament that Zimbabweans were skilled enough to usher leading inventions that defy logic.
“This is the only vehicle (of its kind) that exists in the world, there is no other. This is the only vehicle in the world and it is here in Zimbabwe.
“He (Mr Chikumbutso) is so gifted that you will not believe it . . . when he first came to talk to me, I thought he was not properly wired in his head, but I now know that he is well connected,” he said with a laugh.
President Mnangagwa said he was personally supporting Mr Chikumbutso in his endeavours.
Americans had initially offered the 44-year-old high school dropout millions of dollars to stay and continue his work in the United States, an offer he refused.
“They offered him US$3 million to stay there and I told him to let them have their US$3 million.
“Yes he never went far with school, but he is more educated than engineers with his Form 2.
“All this . . . from the time he began doing these things, I have been supporting him throughout,” President Mnangagwa said.
The President had nothing but praises for Mr Chikumbutso’s innovations which include a wireless self-powering unmanned aerial vehicle (UAVs), commonly known as a drone, and television sets among other inventions.
President Mnangagwa said he actually had the television set at home and had watched it.
“He brought the television to my house . . . the television has no wiring (for connection), you can watch the television, all the stations you want on a tarmac. He has been doing that at my house. But you will not believe it until you see it.
“About two years ago he said he would make a drone, and he made one,” he said.
Mr Chikumbutso narrated the modalities of his latest invention.
“As you know, radio frequencies are measured in nanovolts, meaning to say they are less than a volt…but we find a way of harnessing it through the creation of 70 percent of the components in the microsonic energy, which I have tailor-made.
“So those are the components that enable the radio frequency to be transferred into pure, useful energy and this is the first of its kind in the world,” he said.
The inventor chronicled how he and his colleague were poisoned in the United States of America because their idea was deemed unconventional.
Mr Chikumbutso’s colleague succumbed to the poisoning incident.
“With that technology, it violates the laws of energy in thermodynamics and also the first law of energy as well…” he said, before President Mnangagwa interjected saying, “So they wanted to arrest him for changing physics”.
Mr Chikumbutso continued recounting his ordeal of persecution.
“Even when we tried to file a patent, they (Americans) said we were violating the natural laws of physics, so it is not industrially applicable. We decided to take the trade secret route after that,” he said.
Mr Chikumbutso said his latest vehicle invention could even be used to power houses, terming it a “moving generator”.
“So with this car, you can also use it to power your house, it is a moving generator…it gives you 15 kilowatts to power your house,” he said.
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