CommuTalk Reporter
GWERU: Gweru Mayor, Hamutendi Kombayi is facing arrest as he stands accused of harassing ZBC Midlands Bureau Chief, Tafara Chikumira over a story that showed how standards at Midlands Hotel, which is the former’s business empire, had drastically fallen.
Upon the story’s publication on Zimbabwe’s sole national broadcaster, ZBC, Kombayi sent a string of harassments and threats in various platforms over the broadcast story.
Known to send unprintable words using WhatsApp Audio, Kombayi did not spare Chikumira the noncities and further confronted him during a Presidential business tour recently at Bata Shoe Company in full glare of security personnel and some journalists who had come to witness the event which the reporter says prompted him to make a police report at Gweru Central under RRB number 5191325.
In one of the massages posted on some of the groups, Kombayi is heard shouting inciting his team to effectively deal with the people who spoke ill of the state of affairs at his hotel.
Chikumira also says he now lives in fear.
“If you see a public figure threatening you publicly you ought to panic. As the media, we are the society’s watchdog and I see nothing wrong in critiquing how one of Gweru’s iconic features had fallen from hero to zero.
“Public officials should rather act and improve where wrong has been noted than threaten someone. I am living in fear and that prompted me to file a police report and I also hope justice will prevail,” Chikumira said.
Councilor Kombayi is not new to controversy after video images have been circulating of him firing live bullets at a funeral of his brother recently in what he allegedly called a gun salute to a fallen hero.