FANUEL Mafamba, a headman at Mafamba village, and his wife, Stella, were last week acquitted on charges of cultivating 511 plants of mbanje at their garden when they appeared before Chinhoyi magistrate Felix Mawadza.
BY NUNURAI JENA
The couple was acquitted after the whistleblower, Paul Muchiridza, made a U-turn and disowned the mbanje allegations, saying he had reported the headman for destroying his tuckshop.
Muchiridza further requested the police to pay back the fuel he had given them to pick Mafamba for destroying his tuckshop.
“If I had known that the issue I was called for is about mbanje, not my tuckshop, I wouldn’t have come here,” Muchiridza said.
The magistrate said the evidence presented in court did not directly implicate Mafamba as the owner of all the 511 plants recovered by the police, as it emerged that they collected the mbanje from five different sites along Mupfure River.
Tinashe Dzvora prosecuted.
