Denford Magora's Latest Zimbabwe News Blog

Harare, Zimbabwe, 01 January 2010 Police in Zimbabwe seem to have cracked the case of a US$270 000 robbery at a bank in Chegutu, a few kilometres from Harare and they are blaming South Africans for it. I must admit that this is impressive work from the normally complacent Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP). They now state with confidence that the gang comprised six people: three Zimbabweans and three South Africans. Their names are already known to the police. The South Africans are said to have had local accomplices who brought them into the country (presumably in a criminal case of "importing skills" into Zimbabwe). Two of the locals have since been arrested. The ZRP say they now know for sure that the South Africans have since returned to their country, using an illegal crossing point near Beitbridge border post. Curiously, it is said that the three foreigners boarded buses in broad daylight in Harare in order to make it to the border. Which just shows how cleverly they had pl...

It was in the Exhibit Room at the Harare Magistrates' Court (above) that two policemen and their civilian accomplices were caught red-handed demolishing a wall with hammers and chisels in a bid to get to US$1.5 million which was being kept there as evidence in a smuggling case. Harare, Zimbabwe, 31 December 2009 Times are still tough for Zimbabwe's underpaid policemen, it seems. Cephas Dumba and Talkmore Manyasha, two Harare-based policemen, tried to break into the Magistrates' Court in Zimbabwe's capital to steal US$1.5 million that was being kept under lock and key as evidence in the trial of that Mozambican who was caught a few days ago trying to smuggle the money out of Zimbabwe. The policemen have since been arrested, together with a University of Zimbabwe Engineering student and two other people, apparently initially attempted  to replace the one and half million US dollars evidence money with fake US dollar notes.A fake note dealer had given them US$400 000 for t...