Online Reporter
Chronicle Reporter
A FIRESTORM has engulfed Kumalo Primary School in Bulawayo as furious parents demand the immediate removal of embattled headmistress Stella Mhlanga, who is facing fraud charges and a growing rap sheet of scandal and controversy.
Mhlanga, who is accused of embezzling school funds alongside four staffers, is set to return to court on May 28, but the school community is already calling time on her troubled tenure.
“How can we trust someone who’s accused of looting our children’s future?” fumed one parent during a tense School Development Committee (SDC) meeting. “We’re tired of this circus. She must go — now!”
The school has been thrown into chaos, with fee payments plummeting and parents threatening to pull out their children over a “toxic environment of mistrust.”
The Ministry of Education has confirmed launching disciplinary proceedings, but insiders say a turf war is playing out behind the scenes after Mhlanga’s suspension was bizarrely overturned by head office officials.
“She’s already damaged the integrity of two schools,” said another concerned parent. “Her Magwegwe scandal is still fresh in our minds. Now she’s back at it, we’re not sitting idle this time.”
In a dramatic twist, Mhlanga was booted out of a school heads meeting at Bulawayo Adventist High School last week and reportedly told to go back and “face the music” at Kumalo.
Her leadership history is a laundry list of disasters from being dismissed at Magwegwe Primary in 2015 after parental protests, to making headlines for accidentally sending a pornographic image on a WhatsApp group. Though cleared of that charge, the damage to her reputation has lingered.
ZACC (Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission) recently cited the Kumalo Primary fiasco as a textbook case of corruption crippling education during a national workshop in Karoi.
Provincial Education Director Bernard Mazambani admitted the matter was “damaging the province’s reputation” and confirmed that auditors from Matabeleland North were probing the scandal.
“We’ve recommended suspension,” he said. “But someone above us decided otherwise. This can’t continue.”
Parents are now mobilising a petition to pressure the Ministry to act before the school year is lost to “Mhlanga’s chaos.”
B-Metro: Where the Scandal Hits the Fan!
