Outspoken preacher Apostle Chiwenga accused of three-year affair with maid

HARARE – Outspoken preacher Apostle Talent Chiwenga is facing renewed scrutiny after his former maid, Tsitsi Chendambuya, alleged that they had a three-year affair while his late wife, Pastor Hester Okoh, was still alive.

Pastor Okoh died in June 2019 in a horrific car crash that also claimed two other lives.

The accident occurred about 50 kilometres north of Masvingo, near the Chatsworth turn-off, when Chiwenga lost control of his Mitsubishi Pajero, which veered off the road and overturned. He missed his wife’s burial as he remained hospitalised after the accident.

In an interview on DJ Ollah’s podcast, Chendambuya claimed she and Chiwenga were intimate on multiple occasions, often while his wife was asleep or away.

“Sometimes she would be there, sometimes she wouldn’t. Most times, it happened at night after she had gone to bed. He would come to my room. He’s someone who hardly sleeps, maybe because of health issues—he spends more time awake,” she alleged.

Chendambuya said their first sexual encounter took place in Chiwenga’s house while his wife was away. She further claimed the preacher once expressed regret that they had not met earlier and hinted at the possibility of making her his second wife.

“He told me, ‘I wish I had met you earlier.’ Maybe he wanted two wives, I don’t know,” she said.

The explosive claims come months after Chiwenga publicly ended his marriage to his second wife, Nyasha Vanessa Verenga, just four days after they began living together. The couple wed in December 2023 after Chiwenga paid lobola, but only moved in together on 4 May 2024.

In addressing his congregation, Chiwenga accused Verenga of failing to meet the standards of a “wife of a man of God,” claiming she attempted to poison him and suggesting she might have been a state agent sent to spy on him.