WHY WAS MUGUTI FIRED AS LOCAL GOVT PERMANENT SECRETARY

President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s removal of Tafadzwa Muguti as Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Local Government and Public Works – barely two months in the office – has drawn attention because the announcement followed a fresh dispute over the destruction of homes in Harare. In the hours before Muguti’s departure was made public, Local Government Minister Daniel Garwe said the government had not ordered the demolition of houses in Ridgeview and Belvedere and called on local authorities to stop the work.

The demolitions had become a highly visible test of the government’s clean-up campaign. Residents saw bulldozers flatten homes and other structures, while authorities said they were acting against unauthorised construction, disputed land sales and building on land reserved for public use. Muguti had been one of the most outspoken officials promoting enforcement against structures built without approval.

In a separate wave of demolitions in St Martins Extension, Harare, residents described losing homes they said they had spent years paying for and building. Council records cited in recent reporting listed more than 5,000 houses facing demolition under 37 outstanding court orders. The figure referred to homes targeted under the wider programme, not the number already destroyed. A council task force had inspected more than 22,000 sites as it worked to identify buildings on prohibited or unauthorised land.

The operations have left families facing the loss of homes, savings and personal belongings. Some residents have said they bought stands through council-linked processes and received allocation letters, while the city has maintained that planning and building approvals are also required. The demolitions have renewed scrutiny of how land is allocated, who authorised construction and how councils enforce planning rules.

Muguti’s public position on enforcement was not limited to homes. During his short tenure in the ministry, he promoted Operation Chenesa, a campaign to clear illegal structures and regulate trading in central business districts. The rules he announced restricted informal vendors in central business districts to trading between 6am and 6pm. The measures raised immediate concerns among people whose daily income depends on selling goods in the streets and public markets.

One incident that intensified the criticism involved an airtime vendor with a disability in Harare’s central business district. Muguti was filmed directing municipal police to arrest the man as officers enforced the vending rules. The episode became a focal point of complaints that the operation treated small-scale traders harshly, including people with limited options for earning a living.

Muguti also attracted criticism after saying citizens should remain in their ancestral areas rather than buy land elsewhere. Critics said the statement risked inflaming tribal divisions in a country where people regularly move for work, business and family reasons. His public interventions repeatedly reached beyond routine local-government administration and touched issues of livelihoods, mobility and access to public space.

Another controversy arose after a hailstorm battered Masvingo in early October, damaging more than 17,000 homes. Some families were left without roofs, while relief groups and other potential donors sought to assist. Muguti directed that aid be coordinated through district or provincial government structures, rather than delivered independently to affected communities.

“Whoever is going to do anything during this disaster will be coordinated at a district or provincial level. We don’t want people who are going to do things by themselves,” he said.

He also warned organisations not to “go on the ground without the directive of the government leadership.” The instructions prompted concern among people who wanted to deliver food, shelter materials and other support directly to families. The government later described the relief effort as coordinated, while the restrictions placed Muguti at the centre of a public argument about how assistance should reach storm victims.

His remarks about traditional courts added to the list of disputes. In October, he urged chiefs to stop recording proceedings and posting cases on social media, saying that community disputes should be handled privately. “We should not be allowing cellphones in the chief’s court, where a case is being heard in confidentiality,” he said. He also said the ministry was working on amendments to the Traditional Leaders Act.

Lawyer and politician Fadzayi Mahere publicly challenged Muguti’s authority to set rules for traditional courts or to push amendments to the law, saying those decisions belonged within the country’s established legal and parliamentary processes.

In 2025, Muguti, then-Secretary for Presidential Affairs and Devolution, announced an immediate nationwide ban on tinted windows for private and public vehicles in Zimbabwe on September 2, 2025, citing a rise in crimes such as armed robberies and drug transport.

The directive was quickly overridden and dismissed by senior government officials.
Presidential spokesperson George Charamba disowned the ban, stating there was no legal or factual basis for the announcement and calling it a miscommunication from an unauthorized office. The Ministry of Justice: Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ziyambi Ziyambi clarified in the National Assembly that there was no law in Zimbabwe prohibiting tinted vehicle windows, and that Statutory Instrument 129 of 2015 allows tints as long as visibility is maintained.

Those disputes followed a series of confrontations during his earlier years in Harare’s provincial administration. In 2021, Muguti directed NGOs, civil society organisations and trusts operating in the province to submit their work plans and details of their funding and activities to his office. The directive threatened action against groups that did not comply.

Civil society organisations challenged the order, and the High Court barred Muguti from interfering with, suspending or stopping their work while the matter was before it. The court said the law at the time did not give his office authority to police the organisations. The clash became an early example of the pushback that followed his attempts to extend administrative control over groups operating in Harare.