Zanu-PF official arrested for trying to sell 15-year-old girl into sexual slavery

Former Zanu-PF Bulawayo provincial officer Lillian Kandemiri has been arrested for allegedly defrauding a former prisoner of $40 000 and offering her 15-year-old niece as payment to offset the amount.

Kandemiri allegedly conned Elphas Ncube of the proceeds from his plot that she sold on his behalf when he was in prison.

Ncube was in 2009 sentenced to five years in prison for helping a city woman sell a house that did not belong to her.

He reportedly asked Kandemiri to sell his plot in Esigodini last year, valued at $100 000 and keep the money for him, so that he could use it when he got out of prison.

Kandemiri sold the plot and told him it had been bought for $40 000.

When Ncube came out of prison on 26 January, Kandemiri allegedly hatched a plan to frame him for raping her niece so that he would go back to prison, and she would not pay him the money.

She offered her niece (name withheld because she is a minor) as a wife to Ncube.

Ncube made a report to the police, after some people close to Kandemiri allegedly tipped him off.

Kandemiri was arrested on Tuesday night and will appear at Western Commonage Magistrate Courts tomorrow (Friday) facing charges of fraud and attempting to sell a minor into sexual bondage.

Bulawayo police spokesperson Inspector Mandlenkosi Moyo confirmed the story but declined to comment saying it was now in the courts.

Kandemiri is famous for leading the invasion of the Bulawayo City Council owned Emganwini Farm in 2008.

Scores of people lost property and livestock when council eventually bulldozed the structures they had set up in 2010