SAVIOUR Kasukuere says Home Affairs minister Kazembe Kazembe’s calls for him and other exiled ex-ministers to return home and clear their names had no basis as he was long cleared by the courts.
The former Zanu PF top official skipped the country 2018 fearing political persecution by the current regime led by President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
“How many times should I come and clear the so-called allegations?” Kasukuwere said while speaking to NewZimbawe.com from his South African base.
He continued: “I was cleared of the allegations by the High Court and Supreme Court.
“I am not aware of any new charges and my lawyer would have known.
“Surely should one come back because Kazembe or some politically unpopular politician has said so?”
In August 2019, the High Court stopped Kasukuwere’s trial after ruling that charges filed by prosecutors did not disclose an offence.
Justice Tawanda Chitapi said the magistrate’s refusal to grant the once Zanu PF national commissar exception to the charges on that basis was “wrong in law, common sense and logic”.
Kasukuwere was charged on two counts of criminal abuse of office relating to land allocations he allegedly made while he was local government minister, and another two counts relating to the appointment of Brainworks as advisors to the National Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Board without going to tender.
The former minister made an application of exception to the charges at the Magistrate’s Court, but magistrate Hosea Mujaya threw out his application, and suggested he and his defence team were seeking to buy time.
However, Justice Chitapi said the magistrate had come across as “excitable” and made comments that were “unfortunate if not injudicious” while denying Kasukuwere a fair hearing.
Granting Kasukuwere’s appeal against the dismissal of his exception application by the lower court, Justice Chitapi said “the first respondent (Mujaya) ruling dismissing the applicant’s exception to the charges is hereby set aside”.
Judge said “the failure to allege essential averments on the standards and procedures which the applicant ought to have followed and allegedly acted contrary to or inconsistently with his duty as well as a failure to allege the duties which the applicant abrogated vitiates the charge sheet and renders it a nullity.
“The charge sheet is accordingly quashed in respect of all the four counts.”
The judge found that the trial magistrate Mujaya “appeared intent on stampeding Kasukuwere into a trial, compromise to the judicial officer’s impartiality”. – Newzim
