HARARE – Petronella Kagonye, the former labour and social welfare minister was arrested on Sunday accused of illegally selling land to home seekers in Harare and Mashonaland East.

Kagonye, through her land developing company Glorious All Time Functions Pvt Ltd, has recently clashed with the Environmental Management Agency over land developments in wetlands.

Police spokesman Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi said: “She was arrested on fraud allegations related to illegal land sales in and around Harare and Mashonaland East provinces.”

Kagonye has previously faced accusations of irregularly acquiring six farms in Mashonaland East through her company.

She recently described investigations into her land deals as a “smear campaign.”

Kagonye was deputy minister of transport before she was purged from the government at the height of Zanu PF’s factional and succession wars in 2014.

She later bounced back as minister of labour for a brief period between December 2017 and July 2018.

Recently, she participated in and lost during Zanu PF’s district coordinating committee (DCC) elections in Goromonzi, where she is accused of swindling housing cooperatives, among them Shingiriro Housing Cooperative.

In 2019, ZimLive reported how Kagonye meddled in the National Social Security Authority’s affairs resulting in heavy financial losses, but she has yet to be arrested and charged.

Kagonye, who was appointed to the portfolio after former president Robert Mugabe was toppled in a coup in 2017, also demanded two cars from the pensions fund for her personal use.

She was allocated a Mazda BT50 (registration ADA3513) and Jeep (registration ADF1813) following her appointment after the permanent secretary in her ministry, Ngoni Masoka, wrote to NSSA ordering it to buy an SUV vehicle or twin-cab for Kagonye until the ministry secured one for her.

Her forerunner at the ministry, Prisca Mupfumira, was arrested and charged with corruption over a similar arrangement.

Masoka also requested US$66,000 from NSSA for the International Day of Persons with Disabilities celebrations in Caledonia where President Emmerson Mnangagwa was scheduled to officiate. Caledonia is in Kagonye’s former constituency.

The money was for T-shirts, lunch (two-piece chicken and chips), Jah Prayzah’s live performance, and paying the director of ceremonies, among other expenses.

In March 2018, just three months before elections, she also wanted NSSA to make a similar donation to a school in Ruwa, again in her constituency.

Kagonye instructed an immediate moratorium on NSSA investments, forcing the authority to accumulate a huge cash balance around May 2018.

Kagonye then instructed NSSA to give the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe US$60 million in cash before the July 2018 elections in exchange for Treasury Bills. NSSA lost out in the deal after Zimbabwe abandoned use of the United States dollar in June 2019 in favour of its weak local currency, the Zimbabwe dollar.

During Kagonye’s tenure, NSSA was also forced to pay US$10 million in annual fees to an information technology solutions provider even after the authority’s own investigations done in five African countries showed that the fees could actually be as low as US$250,000.

The contract with the service provider was terminated by NSSA under its chairman Robin Vela, but it was reinstated soon after he was fired.