CHIREDZI West legislator Darlington Chiwa (Zanu PF) has accused Masvingo Provincial Affairs minister Shuvai Mahova and her Lands counterpart, Douglas Mombeshora of defying President Robert Mugabe’s directive to drive out the 213 Zanu PF bigwigs, who grabbed sugarcane plots at Tongaat Hulett in June this year.
By Tatenda Chitagu
Addressing hundreds of protesting Tongaat Hulett workers, who were demanding the return of their company’s 4 000 hectares of land, Chiwa yesterday accused Mombeshora and Mahofa of sabotaging Zanu PF’s job creation programmes.
“When we campaigned in 2013, the Zanu PF manifesto emphasised on job creation, yet Mombeshora wants to destroy the few jobs that are already there. Some of the officials taking land cannot grow sugarcane and are planting maize,” he said.
In June, 213 Zanu PF members, securocrats and civil servants got offer letters to take the land from Tongaat Hulett, a move that forced President Robert Mugabe to hold back-to-back meetings with party members in Harare and Chiredzi in a bid to persuade them to leave the land.
Chiwa said Mugabe had ordered the officials off the land, but Mahofa allegedly defied the directive.
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“Mahofa took over all directors and senior officials in government departments and silenced them from writing adverse reports against them. The whole province was shut out,” he said.
“Workers were blocked from demonstrating for four times and today they gave us the go-ahead, but said we should do it inside Chitsanga Hall after we had threatened to approach the High Court for an interdict.”
Chiwa said most of the land from the sugar-growing giant was being given to cronies, leaving out deserving people.
Sugar Plantations and Milling Workers’ Union in Zimbabwe president, Ishmael Muzuru said: “It is the workers who suffer. It is not Tongaat land that would have been taken, but our jobs. We will be ejected from both work and company homes. We should build our country and create employment.”
Mahofa and Mombeshora could not be reached for comment yesterday.