Jim Kunaka revives violent Chipangano scare

By Tatenda Dewa | Harare Bureau |

Zanu PF celebrated the return to the party of Jim Kunaka, a self-confessed political hitman, at the weekend, and many people are scared.

Kunaka reportedly led Chipangano, a vigilante group that committed murder, rape, robbery, extortion, assaults and intimidation especially in the populous suburb of Mbare in the capital.

The 36 year old man was fired from the party in 2014 for allegedly supporting ousted former vice president to President Robert Mugabe, Joice Mujuru.

He joined her Zimbabwe People First (ZimPF) movement but last week decided to return to the party he says he was born into, accusing the new opposition formation of lacking direction.

Zanu PF was quick to embrace him, apparently too keen to show that the ZimPF project is not going anywhere, but probably to also get more recruits who will help the faction-ridden ruling party cow opposition supporters into submission at the 2018 elections.

The Zanu PF political commissar, Saviour Kasukuwere, who is also tainted by allegations of political violence, was at the rally in Harare’s Kuwadzana suburb where Kunaka was hailed as a prodigal son.

The main opposition, MDC-T, is worried by Kunaka’s return to Zanu PF.

Its secretary for information, Obert Gutu, told the local media: “We are naturally disappointed that Kunaka is going to Zanu PF after claiming to have repented”.

He feared that Kunaka might revive Chipangano.

“Our members in Mbare and its immediate environs have suffered at the hands of that group (Chipangano) and the fact that its lynchpin, Kunaka, has re-joined the violent party is a cause for great concern,” Gutu said.

When he was expelled from Zanu PF, Kunaka made a public apology for his role in political violence, describing the ruling party as cult.

““I was the political violence master when I was in Zanu PF, but what I want people to know today is that when you join a cult, you behave like the people in that cult,” he told South Africa’s ANN7TV

“All the bad things I did while in Zanu PF and Chipangano were not intentional; it was because of the bad system I had got myself into,” added the hitman.

Chipangano is said to have been born in the late 1990s during food riots that rocked the nation on the eve of the formation of the MDC.

The Mbare-based group allegedly took advantage of the chaos that prevailed, grabbing goods from market stall owners, beating up people who resisted their acts and even engaging in outright robbery.

What started off as a purely criminal group transformed into a political vigilante outfit that terrorised Zanu PF opponents in Mbare and surrounding suburbs, particularly during election time.

The militias apparently swooped on an opportunity to curry favour with Zanu PF so as to carry out their criminal activities with impunity.

The opposition complained that even though the members of the group were known, police hardly took action against them, choosing instead to turn in people who went to report against Chipangano.

The group went on a looting orgy, raiding poor markets at Mupedzanhamo, Siyaso and other places and forcing the stall owners to pay at least $1 each a day, mostly to Kunaka.
At the peak of the raids, which were also made at illegal housing stands that the militia outfit parcelled out to people, Kunaka was rumoured to be grossing $60,000 a day.

Some of the money went to the Zanu PF political heavyweights, Mbare residents and human rights defenders claimed.

The late former minister, Amos Midzi was the Zanu PF provincial chairperson and was named as one of the beneficiaries of the loot, alongside Tendai Savanhu, another party heavyweight who, however, dismissed the allegation.

Kunaka managed to acquire a 60 hectare farm in Marondera where he ran a big broiler project, in addition to a reported string of tuck shops in Mbare that he leased out for some $200 a month.

Even though he consistently denied it, Kunaka was also said to have targeted sprouting car sales in Harare where he was said to be extorting car dealers.

Mashwede business owner, Alex Mashamhanda, accused Chipangano of stopping his $1.2 million food court-cum service station project on the outskirts of Mbare.

He said former Local Government and now Home Affairs minister, Ignatius Chombo, was supporting the group, but the senior government official has denied it.

In 2012, police allegedly launched a manhunt for Kunaka following a shooting incident at one of the informal car sale showrooms, but nothing came out of it.

He is said to have fired two shots at municipal officers who were demolishing the car sale yards which were deemed illegal.

In the run up to the 2013 general elections that Zanu PF won with a controversial landslide, the party started disowning Chipangano, perceivably because it did not want the polls to be seen as having been won through violence as was the case in 2008.

Didymus Mutasa, then Zanu PF secretary for administration and the minister responsible for security in the president’s office but now a member of ZimPF, ordered Midzi to rein in Chipangano.

That marked a turn in the fortunes of the group that had presided over a reign of terror for a long time and is now moribund, even though MDC-T’s Gutu insists that it could be revived any time ahead of the 2018 elections.

A significant turn for the group was the abduction in November 2014 of Kunaka by alleged rivals in Zanu PF who were against Joice Mujuru.

He was forced away by unknown assailants who beat up and left him for dead close to a farm owned by Military Intelligence just outside Harare.

Subsequently, Kunaka was removed from the party and has been away until his decision to return last week. Nehanda Radio