Trio in court for forging Zimsec O and A level cer...

Trio in court for forging Zimsec O and A level certificates

Michael Mashiri

A trio that helped a woman to forge Zimsec Ordinary Level and Advanced Level certificates for her to qualify for enrolment for studies in Poland, has appeared at the Harare Magistrates’ Courts.

Farai Chauke, 38, of Stoneridge, Waterfalls, Micheal Sikaliveni, 51, of Crescent, New Mabvuku and Joel Sikaliveni, 25, of New Mabvuku, appeared before magistrate Munashe Chibanda facing forgery and possession of articles for criminal use charges.

Chibanda ordered the trio to pay US$300 each as bail.

They will appear in court on September 12, pending finalisation of investigations.

The complainant in this matter is Zimsec, represented by James Nyabonde, head of the security and loss control department.

The State, through prosecutor Grace Mugocheke, alleges that on June 22, 2023, Sandile Biancah Mabhena who has already been arrested approached Zimsec offices in Harare to get certification on her fake certificates as she wanted to enrol for studies in Poland.

Machena had an Ordinary Level certificate in her name, serial number 5570212, which had ten subjects with Combined Science A, Mathematics B, English Language B, History B, Family and Religious Studies C, Business and Enterprise Skills C, Economics C, Principles of Accounting C, Food Technology and Design B and Ndebele Language C.

She also had an Advanced Level certificate in her name, serial number A/20/003927, with three subjects, Business Studies A, Economics B and Accounting B.

The two certificates were checked by Zimsec and it was discovered that they had been tampered with. It was revealed that the Ordinary Level certificate belonged to Nkosikhona Gumpo and the Advanced Level certificate was Rodney Ndlovu’s.

A case was then reported to the police, leading to Mabhena's arrest.

During investigations, it was established that Mabhena did her Ordinary Level at Lower Gwelo Adventist High School and sat for her Ordinary Level examinations in November 2020.

She wrote seven subjects and obtained six subjects which are Combined Science C, English Language C, History C, Family and Religious Studies C, Business and Enterprise Skills A, Economics E and Food Technology and Design C on a certificate with serial number 0/20/01112173 in her name.

It was also established that she did not go for Advanced Level neither at Gwelo Adventist High School nor any other school in Zimbabwe.

Since she was wanted to enroll for studies in Poland, she approached Bonani Ncube, who is still at large, to originate an Ordinary Level certificate with good passes, including Mathematics and an Advanced Level certificate since it was a requirement.

Ncube then charged Mabhena US$720 for processing the certificates which she paid in full.

Ncube then engaged Farai, who is a graphic designer by profession and already had an Advanced Level certificate serial number A/20/0003927, which belonged to Prince Mwito who was a Form Six student at Highfield 2 High School.

Investigations revealed that Mwito never collected his Advanced Level certificate at the school and his certificate was stolen from the school.

Among the forged certificates Micheal endorsed Mabhena's names on Mwito's Advanced Level certificate.

Michael gave the certificates to Joel who then gave them to Farai.

Farai then sent the two certicates to Ncube through DHL who handed them over to Mabhena.

A follow up was made leading to the arrest of Farai and his workplace was searched, leading to the recovery of various Zimsec Ordinary Level certificates belonging to various names, a Xerox heavy duty printer, two laptops, cellphones, SanDisk USB and two external hard drives.

Farai implicated Micheal and Joel, leading to their arrest and recovery of various Zimsec Ordinary Level and Advanced Level certificates, professional certificates, laptop, cellphones and a printer.

It was discovered that amongst the recovered Zimsec Ordinary Level and Advanced Level certificates, Farai, Micheal and Joel had forged another set of Zimsec Ordinary Level certificate serial number 5569260 and Advanced Level certificate serial number A/21/0001464 for Mabhena which were yet to be delivered.

A visit that was done at Highfield 2 High School unearthed that a total of 97 Zimsec Ordinary Level certificates and 47 Zimsec Advanced Level certificates had been stolen from the school.