Temba Mliswa gives ZACC 7 day ultimatum to give him back his Toyota Hilux and US$53,000 cash that was inside the vehicle

Temba Mliswa

Temba Mliswa wants his truck back. The former Norton MP has given the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission seven days to release a white Toyota Hilux GD-6 it seized in July, and to account for US$53,000 in cash he says was inside it. If the commission does not act, his lawyers say they will go straight to court for the vehicle, the money and their costs.

The demand, first reported on Tuesday by the parliamentary news site Open Parly, goes further than a request for the keys. Mliswa accuses ZACC officers of asking for a bribe to release the vehicle, and he names one investigator, a Mr Tsindi, whose conduct he says “appears to demonstrate a personal vendetta”.

According to Open Parly’s account of the complaint, the Hilux was stopped at Lions Den Tollgate on 19 July on suspicion that it had been smuggled into the country. He says it was not. In a formal complaint lodged on 24 July, and received by ZACC the same day, he says he bought the vehicle from Tatenda Gwinji, a former chairman of Chegutu Rural District Council. He says the sale is backed by a council chief executive’s letter dated 13 May 2024, an affidavit from Gwinji dated the following day, and a valid registration book from the Central Vehicle Registry. He says he was given no charge sheet and no inventory of what was seized.

His complaint went into the commission’s in-tray on 24 July. Three months later, he says, nothing has come out of the other side.

The most serious line is addressed to the ZACC chairman, Michael Reza. “Of grave concern is the fact that one of my drivers was allegedly approached… and requested to pay a bribe in order to facilitate the release,” Mliswa wrote. “If true, this conduct strikes at the very foundation of the Commission’s mandate.”

He also links Tsindi to what he calls a failure to act on corruption allegations at Hurungwe Rural District Council and Karoi Town Council, and alleges that the officer went to the National Prosecuting Authority to stop suspects being arrested. “It is deeply troubling that corruption allegations involving institutions such as Hurungwe RDC and Karoi TC continue to attract widespread public concern. Yet there appears to be little visible enforcement action,” he said. In Mliswa’s telling, the commission has had time to go fishing for one pickup at a tollgate, while the bigger catch in Hurungwe and Karoi swims on.

None of these allegations has been tested, and ZACC had not responded to Open Parly’s questions when the story was published. zimDaily could find no public statement from the commission on the case by Tuesday afternoon.

Through his lawyers, Masiya-Sheshe Associates, Mliswa has made five demands: an independent investigation into the bribe claim, an investigation of Tsindi for abuse of office and interference with justice, confirmation of the Hilux’s legal status, the closure of the matter without further harassment of his family and workers, and disciplinary action if wrongdoing is found. “I remain prepared to submit myself to any lawful investigation,” he wrote. “However, I cannot accept continued harassment, intimidation or the alleged solicitation of bribes.”

It is not the first time Mliswa has written to ZACC about vehicles. In October 2020, as Norton MP, he asked the commission to investigate the then police Commissioner-General, Godwin Matanga, over the purchase of 80 police vehicles. He chairs the Southern African Parliamentarians Against Corruption. This time the complaint is about his own car.

Why does he feel safe?

What follows is analysis, built on the public record.

Putting a dispute with the anti-corruption commission in writing, naming one of its officers, alleging a bribe and setting it a deadline is not the usual way to get a car back. The obvious question is why Mliswa feels safe enough to do it.

Part of the answer may lie in where he now sits. Zanu PF expelled Mliswa in 2015, and he has been an independent ever since, losing Norton in 2023. Yet over the past six months he has become one of the most aggressive civilian voices defending President Emmerson Mnangagwa and the 2030 agenda against the Vice-President, Constantino Chiwenga. In April he said Chiwenga should resign over a sermon about King Hezekiah. On 9 October he claimed a cancelled Politburo meeting had stopped a “procedural coup” against the President. On 17 October he called Chiwenga’s speech at the party conference “theatrics” and asked whether honour demanded that he “stand down”.

He is, in effect, two politicians sharing one body: the independent who answers to no party structure, and the loyalist who speaks for the party’s leader more bluntly than anyone inside it can.

Mliswa has his own explanation. Responding last week to an article that questioned why he defends a President whose party he no longer belongs to, he wrote on X: “When a leader is in office they deserve support and protection & a President does not belong to Zanu PF only.”

The Open Parly analysis he was responding to, by Fanuel James, put it less kindly. It called Mliswa a “deniable official voice” who can say what Mnangagwa cannot, argued that his loudness is tied to the political cover his land and business interests need, and said he now defends Kudakwashe Tagwirei, once a target of his committee work, as a victim of Chiwenga’s camp. Tagwirei was sworn in this month as Minister of Economic Development and Investment Promotion and has since been given a seat in the Politburo, an ascent CITE says has put succession politics “under scrutiny”.

Then there is geography. Mliswa was born in Zambia in 1971 and grew up in Harare, and he built his political career in Mashonaland West. But his rural home is Mliswa Village in Shurugwi South, where he was installed as village head in February 2024, and his X profile now carries the title Sabhuku, village head. Tagwirei was born in Shurugwi, according to the US Treasury’s sanctions listing. The President hails from the Mapanzure clan near neighbouring Zvishavane, and Chief Mapanzure was the guest of honour at Mliswa’s installation.

Zimbabwe’s succession fights have been read along regional and ethnic lines before, and the overlap will not go unnoticed. Whether a shared corner of the Midlands buys anyone protection is a question the record cannot answer, and zimDaily has found nothing to show that it has bought Mliswa any favours in this case. What the record does show is that he picked this fight with ZACC in public, weeks after Tagwirei’s promotion and more than three months after the amendment that moved the next election to 2030 was gazetted.

That is the other question the story raises. Mliswa’s own post makes support conditional on a leader being “in office”. The 2030 agenda has a date on it. Open Parly’s analyst wrote that if Mnangagwa’s strategy fails, “Mliswa is disposable”. Nobody can say what happens to a deniable voice when the leader it defends leaves State House, or who would be waiting when he does.

For now the clock is running on ZACC, not on Mliswa. In seven days the commission will either have answered his letter or his lawyers will be on their way to court. Mliswa, meanwhile, has spent the start of the week posting about a business delegation to Iran that he says he is leading. -ZimDaily