HARARE – Former Tourism minister Walter Mzembi on Tuesday mounted a vigorous defence in court, arguing that public-viewing screens he is accused of illegally donating to major churches were not personal favours but part of a cabinet-sanctioned strategy to rebuild a ministry he says had been destroyed by the 2008 political violence and the fallout from land reform.
Testifying before Justice Benjamin Chikowero of the Harare High Court after losing his bid for discharge at the close of the state’s case, Mzembi said he inherited “a very damaged sectoral brand” when he took over the ministry at the height of Zimbabwe’s post-election crisis.
“When I joined the ministry, it had only five employees…,” he said.
“The ministry had collapsed as a result of the toxic politics of 2008 and the land reform programme of 2000… Arrivals had dropped to about 250,000 per annum and US$296 million in revenue were the statistics I was handed.”
He said the violence of 2008 , a total of 241 people died” had shattered Zimbabwe’s image, forcing him to rebuild the ministry from the ground up.
“My responsibility was to start a new ministry and build it,” he testified. “When I left in 2017… I had steered the sector to 1.5 million arrivals and US$1 billion in sector revenue.”
Led by his lawyers Killian Mandiki and Emmanuel Samundombe, Mzembi repeatedly invoked senior political figures including the late former president Robert Mugabe, the late former prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai, and then vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa arguing that the fan-park screens were deployed with full government authority.
“Mugabe gave me the power to donate the TVs,” he said. “Even Tsvangirai gave a nod… Mnangagwa handed over the assets at Mbungo (Zion Church of Christ). He was assigned by Mugabe. Even Sekeramayi was there when the TVs were commissioned. I can’t imagine unilateral decisions being endorsed by government.”
He said the screens originated from Zimbabwe’s preparations for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, after Cabinet mandated a multisector taskforce to set up fan parks and use football “the biggest political party” to heal a divided nation.
“The genesis of the fan parks was that they were processed by the Sports, Tourism, Image and Tourism Taskforce,” he said. “Football had the potential to unite our people because they were too divided due to the political tensions in 2008.”
He described a sprawling, government-wide operation involving the army, Air Zimbabwe, the Ministry of Sports, the Ministry of Transport and provincial governors.
“Army signals corps were involved storage was done at Manyame Air Base, as well as transport and installation. Air Zimbabwe airlifted the equipment into the country. Nelson Chamisa, who was heading ICTs, wanted to create information kiosks with these TVs,” he said.
Mzembi told the court the screens were later repurposed for religious tourism a deliberate policy shift after government realised that massive church gatherings were pulling crowds but producing no revenue for the fiscus.
“Inside the religious sector there were twin evils, tax avoidance and tax evasion,” he said. “There was a lot of traffic to religious-branded events but no money going into the fiscus. We looked at the church and said tithe we won’t touch, but commercial activities must be taxed and it caused a lot of commotion.”
He said government benchmarked global religious destinations including Jerusalem, Rome, TB Joshua and ZCC and concluded that Zimbabwe could harness its own high-volume churches such as PHD, ZCC and UFIC.
“We actually gave more to the church than these PVAs,” he said. “As beneficiaries of SI 173 of 2013, the church received rebates for capital equipment, construction of churches and hotels.”
He said Prophet Walter Magaya’s PHD Ministries was among the major beneficiaries.
“At PHD, Magaya said during his ‘Night of Turnaround’ he was going to congregate 500,000 people, so the overscreens were at the overflow area,” he told the court.
Mzembi insisted that the Treasury-authorisation argument raised by the State ignored the political context of the Government of National Unity, where “it was impossible to do anything without consulting Mugabe and Tsvangirai.”
He said all decisions went through deep consultation: “As a consensus government, a minister could not do anything on his own. You needed to brief the principals.”
Hearing continues Wednesday.
Mzembi is expected to call a witness.