The former Minister for Public Service, Prisca Mupfumira, has reshuffled her legal team in a strategic move to secure freedom when the trial resumes next month, a Zim Morning Post report claims.
Mupfumira has reportedly engaged Zivanai Makwanya who instructed top advocates Thembinkosi Magwaliba and Sylvester Hashiti while excusing Charles Chinyama in the pending trial.
The publication quotes an unnamed close Mupfumira relative as saying:
Well, Chinyama remains a key consultant in the matter and we are simply strategizing.
We have worked with him for a long time and his contribution to the matter is major.
So to say we dumped him is a matter of semantics.
Mupfumira is jointly charged with the former secretary for Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare, Ngoni Masuka, on two counts of criminal abuse of office and another count of concealing a transaction from a principal.
The duo’s trial was supposed to start on Monday but was postponed to January 16 and 17 2020.
The decision to defer the trial to next year was made after Mupfumira and Masoka told Harare magistrate Munamato Mutevedzi that they could not start trial without the NSSA financial audited report from the period between 2015 to 2018 which the co-accused requested, among other documents.