HARARE – Abel Gurupira, the acting managing director of the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC), a subsidiary of ZESA, has been made the fall guy after he was suspended pending investigations into a series of embarrassing power outages — including the one that plunged President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) into darkness on Tuesday.
However, a parliament statement issued late Wednesday appears to contradict the basis for his suspension, admitting that the legislature had disconnected itself from ZESA supply and was instead running on a hired generator when the lights went out.
In an internal memo dated October 28, ZESA Holdings acting group CEO Cletus Nyachowe suspended Gurupira “pending investigations, following a spate of power outages prior to the Zanu PF conference in Mutare, and during the State of the Nation Address in Parliament.”
Gurupira will remain on full pay and benefits while investigations proceed but has been instructed not to communicate with ZESA staff.
The letter was copied to energy minister July Moyo, presidential affairs minister Joram Gumbo, interim ZESA chairman Austine Nduna, and Mutapa Investment Fund CEO John Mangudya.
Yet, in a development that raises eyebrows, Parliament Clerk Kennedy Chokuda said in his own press statement that the blackout was not caused by a ZESA fault. He explained that parliament had opted to run the SONA on a generator, using ZESA only as a standby.
“When supplies were lost, the generator was still running but not supplying power. Preliminary investigations indicate that a circuit breaker supplying the load had tripped,” said Chokuda.
“The restoration took longer than expected, resulting in part of the SONA being delivered without power supply.”
The statement effectively shifts responsibility away from ZESA, suggesting the power utility has been made a scapegoat for an embarrassment that originated from Parliament’s own setup.
Mnangagwa’s SONA, which officially opened the third session of the tenth parliament, had to be completed under torchlight after the new Parliament building in Mt Hampden was plunged into darkness.
The outage came just days after another blackout on the eve of the Zanu PF annual conference in Mutare, fueling speculation about internal power struggles and mounting government frustration with ZESA’s performance.
Both incidents have since triggered high-level investigations involving the ministry of local government, ZESA, and other government agencies, with promises of “measures to avoid recurrence.”
ZimLive understands the Mutare incident came after a local resident doing excavation at his property damaged a major underground cable, causing a citywide blackout. ZESA engineers worked quickly to make repairs.
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