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Council sues Zanu PF bigwigs

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OVER 100 Zanu PF officials with farms in Matabeleleland North have been handed over to lawyers by Kusile Rural District Council for evading land tax for the past two years.

OVER 100 Zanu PF officials with farms in Matabeleleland North — including the party’s deputy national spokesperson Cain Mathema, chiefs and senior civil servants — have been handed over to lawyers by Kusile Rural District Council for evading land tax for the past two years.

Report by Richard Muponde

The combined debt is over  $30 000.

Some of the debtors include Zanu PF bigwigs like politburo member Jacob Mudenda, Jonathan Mathuthu (husband of Matabeleland North governor Thokozile Mathuthu), Bubi MP and party provincial secretary for administration Clifford Sibanda as well as Lupane district administrator Christopher Chuma.

Chiefs Mabhikwa and Dingani also allegedly owe the local authority. Most of them are beneficiaries of the land reform programme.

Failure by the politicians to pay the land tax has reportedly compromised Kusile Rural District Council’s service delivery in the Matabeleland North capital Lupane.

In an interview with NewsDay yesterday, the local authority’s chairman for the finance committee Councillor Kenny Mpofu confirmed the development.

“Yes, they are owing the council more than $32 300 and we have submitted their names to our lawyers to recover the money. There is a lot of politics in our revenue collection,” he said.

Some Zanu PF provincial heavyweights have also been accused of interfering with the council’s timber projects which were the rural district council’s cash cow.

Matshobane Ncube of Phulu Ncube Legal Practitioners yesterday confirmed that the local authority had engaged them to recover money from defaulters and said they had since issued summons to the fingered debtors.

Contacted for comment, Sibanda said: “I was told by the lands office that I had been removed. I am now there as a safari operator and not as a land owner. I am contracted by many farmers there.” Chuma said he would only give his comment after getting a formal notice from the council.

“I don’t know anything about that, I’m actually surprised. I have not been formally notified so I cannot comment.”

Efforts to get a comment from Mathema, Mudenda, Mathuthu, Mabhikwa and Dingani were in vain at the time of going to press last night.