Terrence Mawawa|Winston Chitando is not fit to be a Minister, business and Information Technology expert Ms Miriam Mutizwa has said.

Ms Mutizwa, of late has been digging deeper into the facts and circumstances of the SMM Holdings Limited (SMM) saga and she is now convinced that from what she has been able to establish so far, the inescapable conclusion that she has reached is that Hon Chitando is a liar, and, therefore, not fit to be a Minister or part of an orchestrated scheme to deliberately keeping the truth away from the public.

“Initially, I was tempted to believe that the SMM saga was limited to a dispute, albeit personal, between the then former Minister of Justice, Hon Chinamasa, and the ultimate shareholder of SMM, Mr. Mutumwa Mawere.

However, the more I attempted to establish a simple fact relating to the status of SMM, the more it is becoming clearer that there is something amiss in this whole saga and the truth is clearly the victim. According to Hon. Chitando, SMM is owed by the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation (ZMDC) and, therefore, it can no longer be a company under reconstruction.

However, in terms of a finding by Mangota J in a dispute that Mr. Mawere had applied to Court seeking a declaratory order that SMM was a reconstructed company pursuant to the averments made by Hon Chitando’s predecessor, Hon Walter Chidhakwa, in both the House of Parliament and the Senate, to the effect that SMM was in truth and fact, a subsidiary of ZMDC, the Learned Judge ruled that SMM is a company still under reconstruction as set out more fully below,” said Ms. Mutizwa.

“It is clear from the above that according to the Learned Judge, SMM’s status remains as it was established by the then Minister of Justice through the Government Gazette of 6 September 2004.

This finding precludes the existence of an alternative narrative that is now been peddled by Hon. Chitando as fact.

In terms of Mangota J’s ruling, the only way SMM’s pre-reconstruction shareholding can be altered or amended is when the provisions of s 35 of the Reconstruction of State Indebted Insolvent Companies Act 2005 (the Act) have been commenced and completed.

In the premises, it was the Learned Judge’s view that Minister of Mines has no jurisdiction, whatsoever in SMM matters as the correct Minister who should have been cited as a respondent is the Minister of Justice.

I cannot, therefore, find any legal and constitutional basis on which Hon. Chitando derives his purported legal authority in respect of SMM.

The crux of Hon. Chitando’s submission to the Court in 2014 or 10 years after the placement of SMM under the control of the Administrator appointed by the Minister of Mines was that the Applicants, including Mr. Mawere, had cited him incorrectly he had no legal jurisdiction over SMM at all.

Against the above backdrop, it is incredulous that the Minister of Finance, Professor Mthuli Ncube, in his 2019 budget speech boldly referred to SMM as a subsidiary of ZMDC. This can only mean one thing that both Hon Chitando and Ncube are contemptuous of Mangote’s finding to the effect that SMM is a company under reconstruction.

If my reading is correct that the ownership status of SMM has not changed from its pre-reconstruction era, then surely Hon. Chitando falsely and wittingly misled both the Parliament and the public on this issue and, therefore, he is putting President Mnangagwa’s administration into serious disrepute,” observed Ms. Mutizwa.

Below is an extract of an exchange between Hon Chitando and the former Chairman of the Portfolio Committee on Mines and Mining Development, Dr. Daniel Shumba, in parliament:

The above statements were made on 11 January 2018 in Parliament. In addition, an extract of an interview that Hon. Chitando had with a journalist at Shabanie Mine in April is presented below:Mr Stanley Dube, the Station Manager of the www.the1873fm.com radio had this to say: “Here the Minister in his own words speaks on behalf of SMM contrary to the position that his predecessor held that he had no authority to represent or act on behalf of a company that he accepted was still under the jurisdiction of the Minister of Mines.

He talks of restoring SMM to its former glory. However, in response to the journalist’s question about the ownership issue, Hon Chitando states as true and fact that: “The ownership issues of SMM are very clear. SMM is part of ZMDC. It is owned by ZMDC. There have been a number of legal processes which have all been completed and indicate that SMM is part of ZMDC. The shares are held by ZMDC.”

However, when confronted with the question of the shares purportedly allotted to a company called SMMH (UK) that allegedly now holds only 26% of the SMM’s issued share capital, he then grudgingly conceded that there is another shareholder.”