KEY POINTS
- ZESA Enterprises workers accuse MD Godfrey Mugaviri of chanting Zanu PF slogans to intimidate staff.
- Workers say Mugaviri centralized all decisions and systematically dismissed managers across the organization.
- The petition accuses Mugaviri of falsely tagging Chinese-made products as manufactured by ZESA Enterprises.
Workers at ZESA Enterprises have petitioned the Ministry of Energy, the Mutapa Investment Fund, the Office of the President and Cabinet, the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission and the Corporate Governance Unit, accusing their managing director of turning a state energy company into what they call a one-man operation driven by political intimidation and corporate fraud.
The petition, directed at Managing Director Godfrey Mugaviri, was contained in leaked documents reviewed this week. The workers describe a workplace where slogans from the ruling Zanu PF party are chanted on the workshop floor, where managers have been systematically pushed out and where every operational decision flows through a single desk regardless of whether Mugaviri is in the country.
“ZENT has been reduced to tuckshop business due to the management style which is very toxic,” the petition reads. “The business organogram structures have been rendered dysfunctional and ZENT is now a one man band by the MD.”
A workshop turned into a political rally ground
The accusations around party sloganeering are among the most serious in the document. Workers say Mugaviri chants Zanu PF slogans in the workshop, drops the names of prominent party figures and uses his proximity to those names as a shield. The petition describes this as creating an “untouchable syndrome” where workers feel reporting misconduct is pointless.
“The MD has turned the workshop into a political rally ground when it is supposed to be a professional workshop,” the petition states. Workers also say he shouts at managers and threatens cleaners and shop floor workers with dismissal, creating what they describe as a climate of fear across all levels of the organization.
Fraud allegations and collapsed governance
Beyond the intimidation claims, workers accuse Mugaviri of falsely labeling Chinese-made products as manufactured by ZESA Enterprises, a practice they describe as clear corporate fraud. All line managers have been rendered ineffective, the petition says, with their authority stripped and decisions centralized to Mugaviri’s office even during his absences.
“The workers fear that if this continues it will render the business not viable and affect livelihood of so many people,” the document states. Workers are demanding action from every institution that received the petition. Mugaviri had not publicly responded to the allegations at the time of this report.
