SUSPENDED Town Clerk Tendai Mahachi’s eight-year marriage with Harare City Council has finally broken down.
BY MOSES MATENGA As the divorce papers are being served, investigations by The Standard on Mahachi’s reign as town clerk since 2007 have shown his days at council were characterised by suspicion, arrogance, hide and seek games, diminishing trust and loss of love.
Among a litany of controversies surrounding Mahachi’s tenure at Town House was his alleged involvement in land scandals, failure to implement council resolutions, defying instructions by councillors and a penchant for disregarding his direct bosses and preferring to take instructions directly from the Local Government minister, among other “transgressions”.
Mahachi was suspended by mayor Bernard Manyenyeni early last month to pave way for investigations into his conduct.
Weeks after his suspension, Mahachi brew a shocker, demanding a hefty exit package that could have seen him leaving Town House with a Jeep Cherokee Overland model valued around $50 000, in addition to a top-of-the-range Toyota Land Cruiser V8, valued at over $100 000. His total demands ran into millions of dollars.
These demands appeared to have jerked council into action, deciding to terminate his employment contract. On Wednesday, the human resources committee chaired by councillor Wellington Chikombo recommended that he be fired by way of three months’ notice following a recent Supreme Court judgement allowing employers to dismiss workers on three months’ notice.
Mahachi has remained quiet since news of his purported dismissal filtered through, but his demands sparked angry reactions from stakeholders, including government, council and residents.
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Mahachi was not short of controversy since his arrival at Town House in 2006 as a strategist after his unceremonious exit from Air Zimbabwe where he was chief executive officer.
Armed with his fat academic qualifications that include a PhD in Organic Chemistry from the University Of Minnesota, US and an MSc in Analytical Chemistry from the same institution, among other qualifications, Mahachi replaced the late Nomutsa Chideya.
Mahachi was named in a damning report in 2010 over his alleged involvement in scandalous activities at Town House that saw tracts of land being sold to a senior government minister and businessman Philip Chiyangwa under unclear circumstances between 2008 and 2009.
While councillors at that time said they believed Mahachi would leave Town House after the exposé, he instead had his contract renewed by former Local Government minister Ignatius Chombo.
During former mayor Muchadeyi Masunda’s tenure, Mahachi was constantly accused by councillors of being Chombo’s blue-eyed boy, which they said explained his arrogance and refusal to implement council resolutions.
When council sought to discipline him, the councillors who would have pushed that agenda found themselves on the receiving end of Chombo’s wrath, sometimes getting fired from council.
Upon Manyenyeni’s arrival in January 2014, Mahachi continued to hog the limelight at Town House for alleged defiance of council directives such as bringing to scrutiny alleged obscene salaries reportedly earned by him and other top officials at the municipality.
City managers, including Mahachi, were believed to have been gobbling more than $500 000 per month in salaries and allowances while thousands of municipal employees earned paltry salaries and often went home without pay.
Manyenyeni suspended him but as soon as Chombo returned from Zambia where he was when the suspension happened, Mahachi was reinstated. This was despite protestations by Manyenyeni and a host of other stakeholders.
Manyenyeni tried to seek parliamentary intervention to have Mahachi disclose his salary, and also provide the city managers’ salary schedule to him, but the efforts also hit a snag.
At one time in 2013, Mahachi was under pressure to disclose his salary and he presented his old Zimdollar payslip to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Local Government.
Manyenyeni, as Mahachi’s boss, curiously did not have the town clerk’s employment contract because Mahachi would not give it to him, promising he would bring it from home but never getting to do so, according to the mayor.
“The information [on the management payroll] never came despite several attempts and orders to have it. As we speak, I still don’t have that information as requested. The only response that I got was after an article in the Press; Mahachi [then] wrote to me saying he had availed the information to the minister. You can see the arrogance. We asked for the information, but he wrote to me saying he had given it to the minister,” Manyenyeni said then.
“The [employment] file could not be located in three of the most likely areas: the mayor’s office, the human capital director’s office or the chamber secretary’s office. The town clerk then indicated that he had his own personal employment file at home.”
Manyenyeni said at one time Mahachi told him that he could not remember who he had given it to at the Local Government Board.
In June 2014, Mahachi was caught in a forgery storm after allegedly misrepresenting facts on his age to avoid retirement. The city wanted to retire all people above 60.
Mahachi allegedly had two passports, one with a birth date of November 15 1956, meaning he would have turned 59 in November this year, but making him ineligible for retirement.
But, a copy of the town clerk’s passport — number CN851406 — indicated that Mahachi was in actual fact born on November 15 1950, hence he would be turning 65 in November this year.
Before the dust had settled on the age-cheating matter, Mahachi found himself in the eye of a storm once again after he reportedly approved the purchase of 18 top-of-the-range luxury vehicles using part of the $144 million loan from China.
Among the vehicles were Ford Rangers and Isuzu double cabs that were dished out to managers at Town House.
Chombo surprised all and sundry when he defended the transaction, saying council should have in fact channelled a lot more money in that direction.
Mahachi’s star, however, faded when at a full council meeting in June, Manyenyeni announced that he had sent him on forced leave to allow for the city fathers to conduct investigations and deal with the succession issue — a process that could only be conducted in his absence.
Mahachi, who during the announcement, sat next to Manyenyeni, was shocked by the announcement. After his suspension Mahachi sneaked into Town House to sign documents, defying Manyenyeni.
This time Chombo remained quiet and before he could speak, he was moved from the ministry in a Cabinet reshuffle which saw him transferred to Home Affairs.
Saviour Kasukuwere became the new Local Government boss and since then things have not been the same for Mahachi.
