Home Affairs perm sec Gwinji caught offside, imposes female associate on State land

Harare- HOME Affairs permanent secretary Gerald Gwinji is in the eye of a storm following allegations that he may have abused office and ursuped police power to overstep his mandate making a dubious attempt to endorse a dubious land allocation. In a letter to his counterpart at the Local Government ministry (Zvinechimwe Chiro) he defends his female associate Louisa Kalenga-Bandal’s illegal settlement at a land that belongs to government in partnership with Arosume Property Development company.

Gwinji was sucked in this property dispute between Arosume and Kalenga-Bandal and he is alleged to have summoned Churu for ‘interviews’ ,in a development that is tantamount to abuse of office and double standards.

He is alleged to have also used undue influence on the police at CID CCD who were investigating the matter.

To get legal recourse, Arosume had to engage services of top legal firm Jiti Law Chambers who wrote a letter of complaint against Gwinji’s conduct.

Arosume, disputes claims that Kalenga-Bandal was allocated stand 313 which Bona Mugabe and Simba Chikore also claim to own in their divorce papers. The developer also denies that it had annexed the stands which were repossessed by government in February 2022″.

Jiti Law Chambers, questioned the logic of legal standi on how Gwinji could involve himself in land allocation over land administered by the ministry of local government.

“How can permanent secretary seek authority to interview another permanent secretary without alerting the minister involved?

“He (Gwinji) had no authority to direct how an investigation is done which is an operational police issue for the Commissioner General (Godwin Matanga) through DCGP Mutamba who is in charge of operations.

“Its like the local government secretary pronouncing passports or birth certificates, its not his mandate,” submitted lawyer Munyaradzi Bwanya in an interview with this publication.

This publication had sight of Arosume’ letter of complaint.

It partly read:

“Gwinji has no power or authority to (directly or indirectly) allocate state land, which is administered by another ministry. Having been a secretary for a while this is known to him and, as such, his attempt to assert falsely that… Bandal was ‘permanently allocated’ is improper and could only be motivated by either a corrupt intent or gross incompetence on his part. Either way, we believe that his conduct is worth your investigative attention,” they said in the letter also copied to the Commissioner-General Police (CGP) Godwin Matanga and Daniel Garwe’s National Housing Ministry.

“Crucially, the former Health Ministry secretary’s actions not only risked undermining the tripartite agreement and related investment policies, but he had “no power to revise cabinet decisions regarding the sale/allocation of state land and he must give a reasonable explanation for his acts of command of insubordination”.

“… Gwinji also has no authority at all to involve himself in the operational command of the police,in particular,to direct how any investigation must be conducted.

“His attempt to usurp powers of the CGP is potentially in violation of Section 174 of the Criminal Code.”

He further argued that the compulsory acquisition of the land was only gazzeted in 2006 and the timelines are in discord with Gwinji’ s claims that the land was allocated to Bandal in 2004.

Gwinji did not respond to questions send to him neither did he answer his mobile phone when reached for comment at the time of writing.