Exiled Zimbabwean businessman, Mutumwa Mawere is fuming after he lost tens of thousands of $US to a judiciary manager who has been collecting rent from his Mt Pleasant House for 17 years without remitting a cent to him.
The judiciary manager for Shabanie Mashaba Mine (SMM)
Afaras Gwaradzimba allegedly entered into lease agreements with various tenants
and collected rent from Mawere’s US$450 000 house located along Durland Close
in Mt Pleasant from 2004 up to March 2021.
The house which Mawere bought using his personal funds when
he worked for the World Bank in 1991 sits on a piece of land that is several
hectares in size.
Mawere confirmed his stand-off with the judiciary manager
of his asbestos mining company SMM over the rentals when The Mirror called him
for a comment. He expressed his disappointment at the abuse of “public power”
by Gwaradzimba who was appointed by the then Minister Patrick Chinamasa to
restructure SMM in 2004.
Although The Mirror failed to get a comment from
Gwaradzimba, the newspaper has documents which show that the judiciary manager
has since accepted that he erred by collecting rent from Mawere’s private
property.
The documents also indicate that Gwaradzimba offered to
immediately rectify the problem by making sure that the rentals and the house
are brought back under Mawere’s control. Gwaradzimba says that he collected
rentals from the Mt Pleasant house because he did not know that the house was a
personal property of Mawere.
However, the standoff got worse when Mawere asked Gwaradzimba
to produce the lease agreements on the house since 2004 so that he could
establish the total amount of money that the judiciary manager collected from
his house. Mawere also wanted to establish who and how the money from his house
was used.
Gwaradzimba declined to avail the documents and instead
referred the matter to SMM lawyers DMH who are also President Mnangagwa’s
lawyers and have represented Chinamasa and Gwaradzimba.
Mawere is seriously considering taking the matter up with
the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission so that Gwaradzimba can be investigated
for failing to provide information on the house.
President Mnangagwa is accused of playing a critical role
in the closure of SMM when he was still a Cabinet Minister. He is said to have
played this role together with the then Minister of Justice, Patrick Chinamasa.
Gwarazimba was appointed to manage SMM by Chinamasa.
Mugabe wanted SMM returned to Mawere when he was still
President and it is understood that this move was blocked by two of his
ministers although investigations by the then Governor of the reserve Bank,
Gideon Gono had indicated that Mawere’s hands were clean.
When Mnangagwa came into power through a coup in 2017 he
promised to have the whole SMM reopened and thousands of jobs created within
six months.
Four years later, the problems at the mine are worse with
assets being stripped and houses and other infrastructure belonging to the mine
being sold away.
“Why would a person who has nothing to hide refuse or fail
to disclose this material information to the owner of the house?” questioned
Mawere. Masvingo Mirror
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