The Financial Gazette

Staff Reporter

 

BUSINESSMAN Phillip Chiyangwa has been let off the hook after a council committee resolved to rescind an earlier resolution to repossess and stop the sale of land to the property mogul or companies associated with him. According to the latest council minutes, the city’s Environmental Management Committee resolved on July 2 that council should accede to the proposed change of land use in Borrowdale from open space and recreation purpose to multi-purpose development, and annul any decision to bar any land sales to Chiyangwa.
On July 29, a full council meeting referred the matter back to the committee for further debate, but councilors stood by their decision not to take any action against Chiyangwa.
The latest resolution comes nearly a year after the committee had said it had detected anomalies and irregularities in the sale of council land to Chiyangwa and other ZANU-PF functionaries, with the businessman saying all land deals he entered with the then Harare Commission, were above board.
Part of the latest recommendation on Chiyangwa reads: “The previous decision of council recorded under item 11 of the minutes of the 1791st ordinary council minutes dated 17th December 2009 be and is hereby rescinded. That council accedes to the proposed change of reservation from open space and recreation to a multi-purposes development.”
Giving its reason for withdrawing its earlier resolution, the committee said: “It felt that the proposal would bring about a result which is in conformity with the principles of sound town planning as laid down in the Regional, Town and Country Planning Act.”
Following the committee’s initial resolution to stop land sales to the businessman in December last year, council then established a committee, led by Mount Pleasant councillor, Warship Dumba, to audit all land sales undertaken during the time when Sekesai Makwavarara was the chairperson of a commission that was running the affairs of the capital city.
Dumba’s committee said land sales to the businessman were tainted by corruption, but Chiyangwa filed criminal defamation charges against the investigating councillors on grounds that their report was flawed and that they had not followed the natural law of an accused person’s right of reply.
The case is still pending in the courts.