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Nyore Madzianike
Senior Court Reporter
THE State yesterday applied for the court to declare hostile one of its witnesses who testified in the matter in which police Commissioner Erasmus Makodza is charged with criminal abuse of office as a public officer.

Comm Makodza is alleged to have offered his lover a piece of land to undertake farming on a police farm in Mashonaland East Province where he was heading.

Mrs Tendai Shonhai and Mr Tafara Chirambira, prosecuting, want their witness Chidhakwa Mugove, to be impeached after he refuted contents of his alleged warned and cautioned statement.

Mugove also disowned a signature appended on the warned and cautioned statement.

The State then called an investigating officer from Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission, Eric Chacha, who recorded the warned and cautioned statement from Mugove to confirm that he recorded the statement.

In his testimony, Chacha told the court that he travelled to Marondera where he met Mugove and recorded his warned and cautioned statement at the police’s provincial headquarters.

Chacha expressed shock as to why Mugove was distancing himself from the warned and cautioned statement, which he said was recorded freely and voluntarily.

“The witness signed the statement. I am quite shocked. It was made freely and he is a senior officer in ZRP with vast experience in investigating these matters. I was once his junior.

“His statement was corroborating with other senior officers who were in the committee. I am disturbed as to how he could deny the statement he signed for while sober, freely and voluntarily,” he said.

In her submissions, Mrs Shonhai told the court that Mugove was handed his warned and cautioned statement to read and refresh his memory before testifying in the court.

She said Mugove had ample time to raise any queries regarding the statement and not only distance himself from it while giving his testimony.

Mrs Shonhai said Mugove was supposed to raise any issues he did not agree with before giving his evidence.

Comm Makodza, through his lawyer Mr Tapiwa Makanza of Makanza Law Chambers, opposed the State’s application saying witness statements could have been tempered with to suit the State’s case.

Mr Makanza submitted that Mugove was being honest when he gave his testimony and the State wanted him to assist in building their weak case by supplying false information.

He said Makodza did not participate in reaching the decision of allocating his lover the piece of land at a police farm.

Mr Makanza said Chacha failed to follow protocol when he went to record the statement alone instead taking an accompanying colleague.

He said Chacha could have manipulated Mugove’s evidence.

Regional magistrate Mr Noel Mupeiwa is expected to make a ruling today.

Meanwhile, Police Commissioner Crispen Charumbira is also expected to appear in court today for continuation of trial on his criminal abuse of office charges.