By Blessings Mashaya
Air Vice Marshal Shebba Shumbayaonda has replaced Perrance Shiri as Air Force boss on an acting basis, President Emmerson Mnangagwa said at the unveiling of the name change of KG VI to Josiah Magama Tongogara barracks in Harare yesterday.
Shiri is now Lands minister in President Mnangagwa’s new Cabinet sworn in on Monday.
A former Air Commodore, Shumbayaonda was promoted to the rank of Air Vice-Marshal in April 2011. He joined the Airforce of Zimbabwe as Air Sub Lieutenant on April 1, 1980, rising through the ranks.
It is not clear who has replaced Major General Sibusiso Moyo, who appeared on State television on the morning of November 15 to announce the military intervention with the memorable words “the situation in our country has moved to a new level.” Moyo is the new Foreign minister.
Efforts to get a comment from Mnangagwa at the ceremony if Moyo and Shiri had resigned from the armed forces were futile.
Mnangagwa said Aaron Nhepera is now the acting director general in the President’s Department, replacing Happyton Bonyongwe who served briefly as Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs minister.
Bonyongwe became one of the shortest lived Cabinet ministers after he was replaced by Zvimba West legislator, Ziyambi Ziyambi, a month into the job.
Yesterday, the Daily News correctly reported a shake-up was looming in the security sector as Mnangagwa moves to fill in the vacancies occasioned by the elevation of top service chiefs before and after the dramatic exit of his predecessor, Robert Mugabe.
By virtue of their Cabinet appointments, Shiri and Moyo automatically relinquished their positions in the security service.
Section 106(2) of the Constitution does not allow vice presidents, ministers and deputy ministers to directly or indirectly hold any other public office or undertake in any paid work during their tenure of office.
In the secret service, the office of director-general of the Central Intelligence Organisation has been vacant since October when Bonyongwe was appointed Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs minister by Mugabe.
Meanwhile, Mnangagwa said his priorities on economic recovery is to introduce cost-cutting measures, stamping out corruption and plugging all resource leakages wherever they have occurred.
“This includes the compelling need to ensure that all those who looted State resources return them or else the long arm of the State will catch up with them.
“As the economy improves, it also gives us the room to improve your conditions of service particularly in the area of institutional accommodation where we can leverage on the abundant engineering skills amongst ZDF members,” Mnangagwa said later at the graduation ceremony at Zimbabwe Staff College. Daily News
