By Robert Tapfumaneyi

FORMER Harare town clerk James Mushore says he was removed from his position the same day he was hired, by then Local Government Minister Saviour Kasukuwere because he was not a thief.

Mushore was hired in March 2016 as Harare’s town clerk on a two-year contract but only served for a day after Kasukuwere said he was not fit for the position.

Writing on Twitter over the weekend, Mushore said Kasukuwere removed him from his new position as he “was not a thief and not one of them.”

“I said (to Kasukuwere) I was a Zimbabwean as he was. He repeated, ‘You are not one of us.’ I said if you mean that I am not Zanu PF like you, well I didn’t belong to any political party. As town clerk my role was to serve all residents of Harare, regardless of political affiliation,” Mushore posted.  

“He (Kasukuwere) then said, ‘You should have told me that you were applying for this job. This job is the second biggest job in the country and we cannot have someone in that job who is not one of us’. I replied that would have been canvassing and in my book that was illegal.

“SK repeated, ‘You are not one of us. You will do this job over my dead body’. I said, ‘You know that I am going to fight you, don’t you.’ He said ‘Handei tione’ and put the phone down. Thereafter, he made sure that I received no cooperation from any of the executives at CoH (City of Harare).”

A former chief executive of NMB, Mushore said former mayor Bernard Manyenyeni defended his appointment and was at one point suspended by Kasukuwere.

“Whilst Ben Manyenyeni was suspended SK then bribed or threatened Chris Mbanga, an MDC councillor and deputy mayor, to suspend me. I ignored the letter and continued going to the office. They then put lock blocks on my office doors to prevent my access.

“I called a locksmith to come to remove them. I was then alerted by a sympathiser from within the administration that plainclothes policemen were in town house with instructions to arrest me for vandalism if I broke the lock blocks. I was advised to go through my lawyers.

“Three years later, the matter is still in the courts, with the CoH lawyers dragging this matter out hoping I Will tire and give up because of legal costs,” he said.

Kasukuwere fired him in 2016 citing the Urban Councils Act and arguing that a council may only appoint a town clerk after approval from the Local Government Board.

Asked for a comment, Kasukuwere said he fired Mushore because of corporate governance malpractices during his stint at the NMB Bank.

“At least three forensic audit reports compiled by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Supervision Division and two private auditing firms link Mr Mushore to shady deals with Kapp Jack Trading, a diversified wholesale company based in Harare. This stopped Mushore’s ascendance on account of the audit findings,” Kasukuwere said.