A man who was jailed for 10 years for allegedly participating in the US$2.7 million ZB Bank highway cash heist in 2021 has been acquitted by the High Court on appeal, reported ZimLive.
Tendai Zuze, who was convicted and sentenced in September 2023 along with Never Mwamuka and ZB Bank employee Shadreck Njowa—described as the mastermind of the heist—has been cleared of all charges.
The robbery, which involved intercepting a ZB Bank cash-in-transit van near Nyabira on the Harare-Chinhoyi highway, was the largest cash heist in Zimbabwe’s history at the time.
The High Court judges who heard Zuze’s appeal found that the prosecution failed to produce evidence linking him to the crime, leading to his acquittal.
The judges, Happias Zhou and Benjamin Chikowero, stated that the prosecution’s theory merely “raised eyebrows,” but “suspicion is not evidence.”
During Zuze’s trial, it was revealed that he was found with US$35,000 in cash at the time of his arrest and that he purchased a Honda Fit vehicle two days after the robbery.
It was also established that Zuze drove his wife’s car through the Nyabira tollgate shortly before the robbery, and mobile phone records placed him near Nyabira at the time of the crime.
However, the judges noted that ZB Bank did not record the serial numbers of the banknotes before dispatching its crew to deliver the cash to various branches, which weakened the prosecution’s case. The judges ruled:
It thus was common cause that ZB Bank, through the first state witness (John Chiwawa), could not identify the huge sums of money recovered from Zuze and his then co-accused as being part of the money stolen from ZB Bank.
It also was common cause both at the trial and before us that there was no direct evidence linking Zuze to the commission of the offence.
The court convicted him after inferring that he was involved in the commission of the offence. That inference was drawn from what the trial court viewed as circumstantial evidence. In reality it was not.
Trial magistrate Clever Tsikwa based his verdict on circumstantial evidence, which included the recovery of US$35,000 from Zuze upon his arrest, his purchase of a Honda Fit vehicle two days after the robbery, and Zuze driving past the Nyabira tollgate in his wife’s silver Toyota Lexus around the same time as the ZB Bank cash-in-transit vehicle shortly before the robbery.
Also, an Econet call log indicated that Zuze’s mobile phone was in the Nyabira area at the time of the robbery.
Zuze argued that of the US$35,000 found on him, US$10,000 belonged to his wife as Stokvel money, and the remainder was his earnings from small-scale mining activities. The High Court judges ruled:
This explanation was not controverted. In any event, since the money stolen from the complainant did not have its serial numbers recorded, nobody testified that the US$35,000 recovered from the appellant was part of the complainant’s money stolen during the commission of the offence of robbery.
At its highest, even taken together with the other circumstances listed in this judgement, the fact that the appellant purchased a Honda Fit vehicle two days after the commission of the offence may have raised eyebrows.
But suspicion is not evidence. We have said the state did not, a quo, controvert the appellant’s explanation that he was a small-scale miner given to obtaining and spending huge sums of money. The trial court did not find that he was not a small-scale miner…
Justices Zhou and Chikowero said this misdirection resulted in a gross miscarriage of justice. They said:
The court ignored direct exculpatory evidence in favour of the appellant preferring to found the conviction on circumstances which came nowhere near justifying the inference that the appellant was involved in the commission of the robbery.
It was not for the appellant to prove that he was innocent. The onus remained on the state to prove that the appellant participated in the robbery and how he so participated. Instead of proving the appellant’s guilt beyond reasonable doubt, the state did the exact opposite.
We cannot conclude this judgement without saying this: The trial court grossly erred in predicating the appellant’s conviction on colourless circumstantial evidence while at the same time ignoring direct evidence, produced by the prosecution itself, which clearly exonerated the appellant.
In the result, it is ordered that the appeal is allowed. The conviction is quashed and the sentence set aside… Accused 2 (Zuze) is found not guilty and is acquitted.
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