HARARE – Registrar General Tobaiwa Mudede and eight other principal directors and permanent secretaries have been retired, Cabinet Secretary Misheck Sibanda announced on Wednesday.
Mudede, recently accused of managing a ‘stop list’ used to deny passports to critics of the Zanu PF government, has been in the position since 1981 and has been involved in every election held in independent Zimbabwe.
The 74-year-old was controversially allowed to stay beyond the Public Service retirement age, which is 65 years.
Others being retired are Ngoni Masoka, Partson Mbiriri, Joey Bimha, Boniface Chidyausiku, Kelebert Nkomani, Ethel Mlalazi, Anne Knuth and Valentine Vera.
“On behalf of the Public Service Commission and the Office of the President and Cabinet, we wish to extend our most sincere appreciation and gratitude to them for their long service and contributions to the people and government of Zimbabwe and for their loyalty and unwavering dedication to duty,” Sibanda said in a statement.
He said the government would continue to invite them to give advice “as and when called upon to do so.”
Mudede recently came under attack after his office refused to issue journalist Violet Gonda with a passport. It emerged that she was on a previously unknown ‘stop list’ used to deny critics of the regime access to identity and travel documents.
Mudede invited Gonda to a meeting at his office on Monday, during which he reportedly demanded to know the identity of “the worm” who had told the freelance journalist of the existence of the list.
He promised to issue Gonda with a passport within days.
At the end of the meeting, Gonda asked Mudede if he wished to apologise to her for the inconvenience she had suffered.
He replied: “I don’t apologise, Lady. I don’t!”
