PRESIDENTIAL spokesperson George Charamba has dismissed the allegations implicating Mnangagwa in corruption and state capture as baseless.
Mnangagwa's name is mired in corruption allegations with leaked voice recordings of a suspected controversial businessman and his ally Wicknell Chivayo implicating him in shadowy deals.
Posting on his X account using the pseudonym dhonzamusoro007, Charamba played down the allegations against Mnangagwa, portraying him as a victim of name-dropping in a deal gone wrong.
"You have business partners who dribble one another. In the ensuing fallout, one of them allegedly name-drops in order to scare away the rest.
"I am supposed to be exercised by such a bald form of self-defense through name-dropping on the part of a party to the dispute? The offensive name-dropping automatically indicts the President and Government? Claims don't become true because they have been made. Or because some detractors of His Excellency the President, Dr. ED Mnangagwa, in chorus form wish them to be so," said Charamba.
In the leaked audios, Chivayo brags about his proximity to Mnangagwa, which he has used to seal deals with government departments.
Chivayo further boasts about an election deal with the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) in which he is alleged to have supplied voting materials.
Charamba said the elections body is independent and its contracts cannot be questioned by the government.
"ZEC is an independent Commission protected by the law. It enters into contracts as it sees fit and in terms of the laws of the country. Government may not interfere in its decisions, without raising fundamental questions on the Commission's independence.
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"No one should incite the Government into breaking the law by diminishing ZEC's status as a legal persona. Besides, it cannot answer for itself. No one has approached it for a comment, in the current mad stampede to self-interview, and to become a self-appointed jury," added.
Chivayo has been seen with President Mnangagwa during State functions, raising eyebrows about his alliance with the presidium.
According to political analysts and observers, the leaked voice recordings laying bare Chivayo's influence raise fears of state capture.
Zanu PF director of information Farai Marapira in an X post cryptically said: "There are some things that are played with and dithered with. Not our Leader and President. There's one guaranteed thing about people on high horses. They fall off... Pride comes before a great fall..."
