HARARE – A Zanu PF youth league member jailed for a spate of robberies in August sent court officials scurrying for cover in Kwekwe on Monday after a magistrate added a year to his sentence.

Tichaona Isaiah Chacha, 34, was convicted on five counts of robbery and assault and jailed for four years and six months.

Twelve months had been suspended on condition that he restitutes his victims for $61,000.

Chacha was returned to court on Monday after failing to pay the compensation, for the conversion of the suspended sentence to a jail term when he flew into a rage.

Shouting that President Emmerson Mnangagwa and State Security Minister Owen Mudha Ncube should also be arrested, Chacha caught officials by surprise when he lunged for a wooden pole inside the court before menacingly charging at court officials and members of the public in the gallery.

A video which has gone viral online shows Chacha chasing officials up to the front of the court, before returning to the court hall wagging the pole threateningly.

He was later apprehended and returned to prison. He now faces fresh charges of public violence.

Chacha, who claims to be a nephew of the former Midlands governor Jason Machaya, is not new to controversy.

He was arrested in 2013 for pouring water on ballot papers after voting had been completed during a Zanu PF primary election.

“The people who were running the elections are loyal to Mnangagwa and they have been using every opportunity to decampaign Machaya so I had to take a stand,” he told journalists from the back of a police van.

Chacha survived a machete attack at the Kwekwe commuter omnibus rank in 2016 during intra-party clashes with a pro-Mnangagwa terror group known as Al-Shabaab, which locals say was being commanded by Ncube.

Chacha was working as a nightclub bouncer in Kwekwe.