By Simba Chikanza | Opinion Analysis | This (pictured) is Paul Revell (95) and his late wife Evelyn; and he’s the former Malvern High School head who set up Gateway High in Harare. He did this while running a kids’ church at his home in Haig Park in the 80s.

At his meetings, he didn’t charge any tithes or offerings like many modern pastors do, and children in Mabelreign used to flock to his house every Sunday morning just to drink free Mazowe, and chop sandwiches loaded with polony meat. Like Paul of Tarsus 20 centuries ago, he wound use his headmaster’s salary to finance the food for the kids’ church, which money all came from his pocket.

His salary would also finance his wife, Evelyn’s school volunteer job which involved traveling to Haig Park and Alfred Beit primary school to teach kids Bible lessons.

Paul Revell’s heart was just to build leaders and not exploit through religion, or any other ways. He passed on earlier in March in Oxford, where he had retired to. He was great man of note who stood by his word.

Despite his greatness, there is not a single news article about Revell on the internet and throughout his life there was not a single award to applaud him. And yet the same man raised nation leaders.

From Malvern High School to Gateway High, whatever Paul Revell would touch would liven up. The atmosphere would totally lighten up as soon as the man would march into a meeting, and whatever camp meetings that involved him, would leave an experience worth living.

On the podiums he would refuse to use the microphone device which the Makandiwas, Talent Chiwengas, Ueberts etc like using, and would say, his voice is loud enough, literally!

“I don’t need this microphone; I was used to preach on the streets of London years before it was invented,” he would say.

Paul conducted his life like his Biblical alias, the journalist, tent maker, and Biblical author of most books, Paul of Tarsus, who instructed preachers to work for their means like everyone else and not to take a dime from anyone.

What we learnt as we grew up from Revell was community service, humanity and accountability. He also taught us to respect people in authority.

One teaching him and others coordinated at a Scripture Union Mazvikadei Dam function together with mkoma Simba Ranganayi, in 1996, warned kids about the dangers of following Daddy-cults. I attended that camp together with many including @Privilege Musvanhiri and @Mercy Mai Ty.

Revell was way older than all of us, and yet he never demanded to be called “Daddy.” He seemed perpetually stuck to the purpose of fulfilling what he taught us.

In that same year, 9km up the straight Harare Road from Mabelreign, a certain very tall A Level student, sharing the same classroom with older brother, caused pandemonium at Marlborough High School where he bullied his headmaster, Mr Arison Chiware. This very tall teenager was playing ‘Daddy’ attitude to the headmaster (who’d saved him) he had scammed his way into the school for A Levels, when the former Fletcher High pupil couldn’t qualify as his GSCEs were too low for the institution’s standards. He accused Mr Chiware of corruption, the very behaviour he himself had exhibited when he’d lied that despite his poor O Levels, he will uplift the school’s sports status. Mr Chiware would later quit education after those harrassments.

Back in Mabelreign, growing up was a bit different. Paul Revell was one of many men who helped shape who I am today, a “resistance-to-Daddy-cults” character that caused me at a young age to chose to play with giants like Strive Masiyiwa, Nicholas Vingirai in 1998, during the days that the RBZ looter Ezekiel Guti was luring business people at Raylton Club, Harare.

23 years later, I would rise to be the only Business Director with Strive Masiyiwa (Kwese), signed to Europe’s largest and the German Broadcaster, DW, both of us as the only media partners from Zimbabwe (see picture back row 4th from the right).

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By this time I was also signed with Al Jazeera Media network doing the GoldMafia documentary investigating Daddy characters who include Uebert Angel.

Between 2012 and 2015, I investigated a Daddy character called Walter Masocha, in Scotland, who was later prosecuted over sex crimes. One of the victims in his case suffered intrusion attacks from a Daddy character, a journalist from Zimbabwe, who falsely claimed he wanted to interview her, when all he wanted was a sexual relationship. Soon after that breach, she struggled with stress and Masocha won an appeal in 2015. I won’t mention the journalist’s name.

Fortunately, a new prosecution has since been re-launched and the daddy character has finally been convicted in the last few days and will be sentenced later this month, much to the relief of victims who include minors.

They are still many more sex attack victims, who’ve struggled to speak because they’ve been afraid of the daddy characters. We encourage them to speak, especially now that the Daddy character has finally been convicted.

The Daddy characters are still out there lurking to attack their next victim, and it is Paul’s inspiration that led me to launch investigations that include GoldMafia in 2015.

In 2021, a respected senior journalist by the name Geoffrey Nyarota conducted and published on the AMH newspapers servers, an investigation on one of his former employees, who used to be his cameraman and many times played a Daddy on him at work to the point of at one time deleting his own voice from the boss (Nyarota’s) own TV program so that the work appears like the employees’. “He was just a cameraman, and yet he deleted my voice,” elder Nyarota complained to me. The AMH newspaper editorial investigation revealed that the “Daddy” character employee has got a case to answer over proceeds of crime. By that time, an NHS expert who published serious allegations had been falsely accused that she had been sent by the government of Zimbabwe to media outfit called Gambakwe on 18 Aug 2020. She had however broadcast a live video the day before, on the 17th of August, and has never at any time had any contact with the said Gambakwe Media, which she has never been in need of as she is a regular contributor to the ZimEye news network, a company also with several m public broadcaster contracts.

I would later on spend a lot of time with the senior journalist before his sudden death, and he left me written instructions, to finalise his investigation, on one of his former employees who imposes himself as a Daddy figure to the online community.

“Good morning Simba. Have you since investigated what £50,000 sports car Daddy**** invested in? That’s a lot of cash in the UK back then for a cameraman from Zimbabwe,” he said, in passing.

Both Paul Revell and Geoff Nyarota are legends who for 36 years in the period 1989 to 2025, worked to prepare me for my assignment to expose Daddy characters. These two men were the age of my own father and yet they never imposed on me that I title them such. Nyarota was just Geoff, and Revell was just Paul; yet their work of their toil continue me to light up the passages of the universe.