ZIMBABWE Electoral Commission (ZEC) chairperson Priscilla Chigumba was challenged to resign on Friday after details emerged of a romantic relationship with Winston Chitando, a married Cabinet minister and Zanu PF candidate for the Senate in Masvingo.

Former Sunday Mail editor Edmund Kudzayi revealed details of the romance on Twitter, and suggested that Chigumba was too compromised to play a fair referee in Zimbabwe’s electoral process.

“ZEC chairperson Justice Chigumba has a sexual relationship with Zanu PF cabinet minister Winston Chitando. This presents a clear conflict of interest: if Zanu PF loses the election her lover will lose his job. She must do the right thing and resign,” Kudzayi said in an eight-part thread, sparking opposition demands on Chigumba to resign, if the allegations were true.

Chigumba’s phone went repeatedly unanswered when ZimLive.com sought her comment. Chitando promised to return our call but had not done so, and subsequent messages left on his phone were not returned.

Patson Dzamara, an adviser to MDC Alliance president Nelson Chamisa, said if the allegations were true, Chigumba would have fallen short of the standard expected of a person in her position.

“Nobody has a right to legislate anyone’s sexual pleasures. But Chigumba’s matter has a bearing on her public appointment. It therefore becomes a matter of public concern. This doesn’t have anything to do with her being a woman. It has everything to do with interests,” Dzamara said.

He went on: “When colleagues said that Chigumba was in bed with Zanu PF, I didn’t think it was literal.

“She is compromised and she must resign.”

The revelations about Chigumba’s private life have added fuel to an already raging fire, amid opposition accusations that she has mishandled ZEC to favour Zanu PF.

The MDC Alliance says she printed ballot papers in secret; bungled postal ballot voting by sending ballots out late; gave Zanu PF mobile phone numbers of voters; printed an illegal double-page ballot paper so that Zanu PF candidate Emmerson Mnangagwa is top instead of a single file listing by alphabet and failed to enforce the law about fair access to state media by all parties.

Chigumba is bemused by the attacks, insisting that she has done everything according to the law, and her supporters charge that she is being targeted because she is a woman.

Lawyer Alex Magaisa said by accepting appointment to public office, Chigumba had signed a contract for probity.

“Section 196(2) of the Constitution requires public officers to avoid conduct that leads to conflicts between their personal interests and their public duties. This provision covers conduct both in private and public life. In other words, what you do in your private life must not lead into conflicts with your public duties,” Magaisa said.

The same provision required public officers to “abstain from conduct that demeans their office”.

“It is no defence that it happened in one’s private life,” said Magaisa.

Kudzayi said frantic efforts had been made to stop him from releasing details of Chigumba’s affair with the married Chitando. A compromise had been offered that Chigumba would issue a statement in which she would have admitted having a “personal private relationship with a public figure”, without naming Chitando.

“Chigumba’s superiors did not allow her to sign the statement. This left the minister out to dry,” Kudzayi said.

Before becoming a minister following a military coup that elevated Mnangagwa to the presidency, Chitando was executive chairman of Mimosa Mining Company in Zvishavane.