Former Energy Minister Samuel Undenge who was earlier on today convicted of a charge of abuse of office was sentenced to 4 years in prison by Harare magistrate Hosea Mujaya. The magistrate suspended a year and a half leaving the former minister to serve an effective two and half years in prison.
Undenge was convicted of the offence after the court heard that he wrote a letter directing power utility Zesa to engage the services of Oscar Pambuka and Psychology Maziwisa’s company, Fruitful Communications to do public relations work for the power utility. This was despite the fact that Zesa has its own public relations department. As a result of the letter, Fruitful Communications later received a payment of $12 650 from Zesa.
Undenge has the dubious distinction of the being the first former cabinet minister who served in former President Robert Mugabe’s administration to be convicted of any crime. When the Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) ousted Mugabe in November 2017, they said they were only targeting criminals around former president Robert Mugabe who had committed crimes that caused social and economic suffering so that they could bring them to justice.
MA 1 AKE
Its now payback time and you have led an example to would be offenders. New Dispensation has a zero tolerance approach to corruption,macourts ava kuita basa.