By A Correspondent | Businessman Kuda Tagwirei wants to purchase the country’s first-residents-money built-giant-stadium, Rufaro, ZimEye has learnt.
This comes at a time when it also emerged that the former Douglas Mwonzora led Harare City Council had by last year leased out Rufaro to Tagwirei’s Sakunda company.
In the latest development, Harare Mayor Jacob Mafume, who has battled out the takeover of the Pomona Dumpsite by the alleged “Mabelreign-armed robber” Delish Nguwaya’s Geogenix BV company, has put his foot down saying he will not sign off any council properties during his term.
Sources told ZimEye, Tagwirei has been secretly bidding for the city’s 2nd stadium which was built by Harare residents in 1972 and commissioned by a junior Councillor (picture). Properties built with residents’ money cannot be sold off to businesspeople who became billionaires in the same city that made them prosper, says Mayor Mafume.
Said Mayor Mafume:
“I am tired of phonecalls, I am tired of candestine meetings…
“We are not going to surrender council property to people who have made money in Harare, and they want to take the inheritance of all the residents and give it to their children and they say we were cleverer than other residents, so that your children inherit properties that belong to the city.
“What kind of businesspeople are they? We don’t need them. What we should be doing is properly charging then rates and taxes, so that they understand that it is not their money.
“How do you take things that have been inherited by residents from the 1970s and we want to give to an individual company?
“So let’s stop promising people properties that belong to the city…
“So tell them, many of them to stop coming to my office, to the councillors trying to persuade them…even you, avoid promising people properties that belong to the city.
“And those business people, we have made you rich as a city, we have made you billionaires not only in Zim, but across Africa and the world, if you want to give back, give back properly…”