HARARE – Home Affairs permanent secretary Gerald Gwinji has been sucked into a property dispute between Arosume Property Development (Arosume) and Louisa Kalenga-Bandal amid reports of spirited attempts to interrogate his Local Government peer Zvinechimwe Churu.

This comes as the Harare-based company has been battling several parties it accuses of using “political influence to continually harass its employees on incomplete investigations and disrupt its operations” through spurious allegations that it has even grabbed some 14 stands in Carrick Creagh when they were repossessed by July Moyo in October 2022.

“We are instructed to lodge this extraordinary complaint against the unfair meddling, and potentially unlawful conduct of Gwinji in the administration of the tripartite agreement,” Jiti Law Chambers said in a letter to Churu.

The lawyers added that Arosume’s June 2007 partnership with the government still subsisted and that the issues with Kalenga-Bandal “did not fall under the Home Affairs secretary’s purview and protocol demands that the ex-army officer addresses his concerns/requests to the Local Government boss’ superiors”.

“It has come to our attention that on the 16th of March 2023… addressed a letter (to his colleague) on behalf of the Criminal Investigation Department’s commercial crimes division to interview you. That alone is bizarre,” it said.

While Arosume and its lawyers have insisted that any moves to obtain information about the tripartite agreement ought to be directed Public Service Commission chairperson Vincent Hungwe or cabinet secretary Misheck Sibanda, the letter could have been delivered to Moyo.

According to Gwinji’s support letter for Kalenga-Bandal, the latter had been the “permanent and true owner of stand number 313 under the Sally Mugabe Housing Cooperative (SMHC)”, which was meant to benefit civil servants.

“In 2004, stand number 313 did not exist at law because the subdivision was only approved by the surveyor general on the 25th of January 2008. At no point in 2004 was SMHC… empowered/entitled to allocate Borrowdale land,” the lawyers said in a stinging rebuttal, adding the Home Affairs secretary’s “requests for certain documents in an on-going civil litigation was worrying and the claims were bereft of fact as the farmland forming the estate was only acquired in 2006.

“… Gwinji has no power or authority to (directly or indirectly) to allocate state land, which is administered by another ministry.

“Having been a secretary for a while this is known to him and, as such, his attempt to assert falsely that… Bandal was ‘permanently allocated’ is improper and could only be motivated by either a corrupt intent..,” they said in the latter also copied to Police Commissioner-General Godwin Matanga and the National Housing ministry.

It is being alleged that the former health ministry secretary’s actions not only risked undermining the private-public partnership and government policy, but he had “no power to reverse cabinet decisions regarding the sale/allocation of state land”.

“… Gwinji also has no authority to involve himself in the operational command of the police… to direct how any investigation must be conducted. His attempt to usurp the powers of the CGP is potentially in violation of Section 174 of the criminal code,” Arosume said.

Shockingly, stand number 313 of Carrick Creagh has been listed under Simba Chikore and Bona Mugabe’s epic divorce case.