Former CCC Councillor Blessing Tangwara Faces Imminent Arrest Over Fraud Allegations – Eduzim News

By A Correspondent| Former Citizens for Coalition Change Seke Ward 1 Councillor Blessing Tangwara is facing imminent arrest on allegations of abuse of authority and fraud.

Tangwara is a former Seke Ward 1 Councillor and a native of Chinhanga village, Seke district.

It is alleged that sometime in 2021, council made a decision through the Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee to regularise a portion of Chinhanga village close to Ezekel Guti College and at the border with Riverside location of Chitungwiza where a number of illegal settlements had mushroomed.

As per procedure, Council received village assembly minutes and attendance register submitted by Councillor Tangwara allegedly from the village Head Musekiwa Chinhanga.

The minutes included a list of about 60 prospective beneficiaries alleged to be original villagers considered for allocation, triggering a litany of written complaints from bona fide Chinhanga residents as well as local ZANU (PF) youths who had correctly noted that both the list of the purported original villagers and village assembly attendees were dubious with less than 20 percent being known residents of Chinhanga village.

The Manyame RDC, Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee recommended that the area be pegged 1000m2 of communal homesteads.

The Committee also recommended that beneficiaries be given communal land permits. Tangwara wrote a letter recommending the allocations to Council.

Investigations by ZimEye revealed that in 2021, the same committee made a resolution in minute number 159 of 2021 to regularise all illegal settlers who had built structures or living in the area, penalise them and offer them permits. A decision was made to send the Council Planner to gather the data and verify the authenticity of the settlers. The Planner indicated that there was violence in the area and hence Tangwara was tasked with data gathering and verification.

Evidence gathered by this publication shows that Tangwara ignored a large number of illegal settlers and wrote names of clients who had paid him sums averaging $5000 per stand.

These people did not have structures but Tangwara lied that they had been offered by Council through the waiting list, including one Mercy Ngorima who allegedly paid about $4000 to Tangwara.

The unsuspecting clients did not know that this was communal homesteads meant only for illegal settlers and bona-fide original settlers. This triggered a wave of letters of complaints from bona fide prospective beneficiaries who wrote to the Council Chairperson Alderman Mudzora citing abuse of office by Tangwara and the irregularity of tasking a councillor who was also a resident of the village with data collection. This is specifically captured on Agriculture & Natural Resources Committee minute number 159 page 5, containing at least 14 complainants who had refused to offer Tangwara $1000 each and hence were left out. Tangwara vowed that they would never be regularised under his watch. The letters of complaint by the settlers are in possession of this publication.

On hindsight Council moved in to correct the anomalies. Council Chairperson Hon. Mudzara then wrote to Councillor Tangwara instructing him to excuse himself from the committee. He was also instructed to declare interests and excuse himself. The committee then sent a verification team to the residents of some of the complainants who included Nettery Mutizira, the ZANU (PF) Mash East Youth Vice Chairperson who wrote a letter received by Council on 2 February 2024. In that letter it was alleged that Tangwara received $1400 from one illegal settler to support him with offer letter.

It was discovered by Council that indeed these individuals had genuinely been left out. They were then offered permits and Tangwara was verbally reprimanded by the Chairperson of the Agriculture committee.

Council also received complaints that one security employee a Mr Gondo who was tasked with guarding the area was a resident of Chinhanga and as such was conspiring with Tangwara to sell communal stands to unsuspecting home seekers. The Council CEO, Dr. Farirai Guta, moved swiftly to remove Gondo from duty in the area and relocated him to Beatrice Council offices. This is also captured in the Council minutes in possession of this publication. As a result, a number of original villagers whose names were fraudulently deleted by Tangwara took the matter into their own hands and invaded the few remaining open spaces, as the police moved in to deal with the chaos.

In its wisdom or lack of it Council again made a fatal error of again asking Tangwara to number the stand 1 to 105 stating the name of illegal settlers or original villagers and the structure he/ she had built. A very dubious and erroneous allocation list was produced such that the person staying on number 20 was captured as number 40. Furthermore, some of the people initially maliciously skipped from allocation minutes suddenly found themselves on the list of numbering. Example is Hero Kunaka captured on number 1.

Upon realising these anomalies Manyame Rural District Council through the Planner promptly suspended the whole process and made a decision to revisit the whole area and redo data gathering and verification to correct the anomalies on 3 letters dated 5 and 6 September as well as one on 22 November 2024 to the Zimbabwe Republic Police Chitungwiza. This nullification and withdrawal of permits and re-offering exercise will be a welcome relief to tens of illegal settlers who were prejudiced by Tangwara in favour of his clients.

When contacted for comment Headman Chinhanga corroborated the findings of this publication and stated that more than 50% of the so-called original villagers were unknown to him. He also rejected some clients who were being paraded as his relatives as fake. He praised Council for promising to redo the whole exercise. A report has been lodged with the Police Anti-Corruption Unit to effect Tangwara’s arrest.

Several witnesses who were approached by Tangwara demanding various amounts of money in exchange of regularisation are willing to testfy.

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