Nicholas Goche

Who is Nicholas Goche?

Nicholas Tasunungurwa Goche is a Zimbabwean politician, currently serving as Minister of Transport. Previously he was Minister of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare.

Goche and Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa met with Tendai Biti and Welshman Ncube, the Secretaries General of separate factions of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, in Pretoria, South Africa on 16 June 2007. South African President Thabo Mbeki, appointed by the Southern African Development Community, presided over the negotiations, which sought to end economic sanctions on Zimbabwe.

Goche was the ZANU-PF candidate for the House of Assembly seat from Shamva North constituency in the March 2008 parliamentary election. He won by an overwhelming margin, receiving 10,385 votes against two MDC opponents, Chimombe Godfree and Matibiri Anderson, who respectively received 1,354 and 1,173 votes.

Along with Goche, Chinamasa was one of the negotiators sent by ZANU-PF to the talks between political parties that began in Pretoria on 10 July 2008, following the disputed re-election of President Robert Mugabe.

When the ZANU-PF–MDC national unity government was sworn in on 13 February 2009, Goche was moved to the position of Minister of Transport. As a result of a dispute between Nelson Chamisa, the Minister of Information and Communication Technology, and Webster Shamu, the Minister of Information and Publicity, regarding which ministry should deal with telecommunications, The Herald reported on 10 April 2009, that President Mugabe had assigned responsibility for telecommunications to Goche's ministry.