Harare PDC Muguti holds two offer letters on single industrial stand

By Nyashadzashe Ndoro | Nehanda Politics |

Harare Provincial Development Co-ordinator Tafadzwa Muguti is a holder of two offer letters on a single industrial stand in Chitungwiza, Nehanda Radio can reveal.

The offer letters have different dates and stamps. Muguti got his first offer letter for an industrial stand 30432 in Tilco, Chitungwiza in 2009.

The offer letter dated 19 February 2009, signed by then Chitungwiza Town Clerk, W. E Gwanzura had conditions that the client was to service the land:

1) the stand is not serviced
2) you should pay to council the sum of US$ 20 being administration fees.
3) you may write to the council requesting that the stand be title surveyed indicating that you will meet the survey costs.
4) engage a registered civil engineer to design the services to the council’s approval
5) liaise with Zesa for electricity supply.

After being awarded the stand, Muguti went for ten years without making any progress on the site. In 2019, when he was Zanu PF Director, Investment and Economic Transformation, Mutugi applied again for the same stand.

An offer letter with a stamp dated July 11, 2019 was served to him. Muguti confirmed that he paid a deposit of Z$10 000 for the sand.

The offer letter had the same address with the first one of 2009. The 2019 offer letter did not not renounce the 2009 offer letter.

“With reference to your application to acquire an industrial stand, we wish to advise you that your application has been successful. This offer is to lease stand number 30432 measuring approximately 3800 square metres located in Tilcor, Industrial area, Zengeza.

“The stand is being offered at the current cost of Z$8,00 per square metre,”read the offer letter.

Nehanda Radio understands that the offer letter is also among the illegal parcelling stands that led to the arrest of former Chitungwiza Municipality Housing Director Hazel Sithole in September 2019.

Contacted for a comment Muguti said he knew nothing about the 2009 offer letter. He also disowned the address on the 2009 offer letter even though it had the same address with the 2019 offer letter that he accepted.

“I have no idea of any 2009 offer letter. Check with Town Clerk Chitungwiza. Please do your own investigations thoroughly and you see it’s just name smearing. Thank you for checking with me first,” Muguti said.

“I have never applied for a stand. I was in SA outside the country. If it’s mine every offer letter is accepted, ask them for my acceptance form and sign lease agreement or sale agreement.

“Remember, an offer letter is not a crime anyone can be offered no do I control internal processes. That’s why Chitungwiza has thousands of offer letters issued. Can we say all those people are criminals? I don’t own any land let alone signed any sale agreement after so called offer letters.

“By the way I stayed in Unit K not Unit G that’s not my home address. You can see what I mean,” he said.

This week, President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s Special Anti-Corruption Unit (SACU) ordered Muguti to provide full documentation of how his office and the Minister Daniel Garwe’s Housing and Social Amenities Ministry were accusing Chitungwiza businessman, Wellington Peyama and his company Peyama Investments of being “illegally” allocated State land in Chitungwiza in 2008.

But Peyama challenged the PDC to provide the documentation of the way he also used to acquire his stand in 2009, three months after Peyama got his.

“For more information, please be advised that the same PDC whom you have given directions to, was allocated a commercial being No. 30432 Tilcor Road Chitungwiza, by the same Municipality during the same time that Peyama Investments was allocated a stand and through the same process,” read a letter dated 12 February, 2021, sent to head of SACU, Thabani Mpofu by Peyama.

“In the interest of transparency, fairness and the principle of equality before the law, I believe that the PDC must, at the time that he furnishes you with Peyama Investments’ paperwork, simultaneously supply records and paperwork of his aforementioned commercial stand so that they too are subjected to same scrutiny as those of Peyama Investments,” read the letter sent to SACU.