Bookshop owner arrested for selling Tsvangirai book

Headlines, News — By admin on January 20, 2012 7:38 pm

VICTORIA FALLS- Police in the resort town of Victoria Falls on Friday arrested a bookshop owner, Sinekiwe Matore for selling Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s book, At the Deep End, in her shop.

Matore, the owner of Rosepet Bookshop in central Victoria Falls Town, was herself ‘At the Deep End’ as the pro-Zanu PF police officers were also said to be looking for her business partner, Mlamuli Mabhena.

Previously on the 17^th of January 2012, the police raided the bookshop and confiscated all the 10 books in stock, which they took to the police station before asking Matore and Mabhena to produce invoices showing how they had purchased the books.

The receipts produced showed the books had been purchased at a bookshop in Harare. However on Friday, one police officer who identified himself as Officer Shiri from the Law and Order Section went to Rosepet and arrested Matore.

At the police station, the police had planted alleged subversive material, red cards and small MDC flags inside all the 10 books. One of the ‘subversive materials’ has a list of 11 Zanu PF officials including Robert Mugabe which claims that they should be eliminated.

The MDC-T said the “Victoria Falls police are now desperate to place false charges against the two bookshop owners by the planting seditious material in order take them to court.”

Last year, senior MDC-T officials at Harvest House, the MDC headquarters, claimed they had unearthed a plot by State security agents to plant incriminating evidence at the party offices, the Prime Minister’s offices and his residence in order to arrest several senior party officials.

At the Deep End is an autobiography of Tsvangirai and was officially launched last December. At its launch at Harare’s Book Café, At the Deep End sold 235 copies within two hours, with the PM at hand to personally autograph them.

The 663 page book chronicles Tsvangirai’s personal and political life. The book, according to Tsvangirai, was titled At the Deep End on account of the challenges he has faced, some of which were “knife-edge and like being thrown at the deep end. I had to swim and overcome all the obstacles,” he says.

Tsvangirai said that so much had been written about him from other people’s perspectives and not from his own view-point. The book is doing well in Zimbabwe, South Africa and the SADC region at large while it is also selling well in Europe, USA and Australia.

At the Deep End was written by President Tsvangirai in collaboration with his former spokesperson and veteran journalist, Tagwirei William Bango. The book was published by Penguin Books of South Africa.

In the book Tsvangirai accused former South African President Thabo Mbeki of being a central player in the 2005 MDC split. He claims Welshman Ncube, the party’s founding secretary general, held secret meetings with a Zanu PF faction led by Emmerson Mnangagwa to forge an alliance in a bid to “secure Ndebele interests”.

“Numerous reports reached me of secret meetings involving Ncube and a Zanu PF faction aligned to Mnangagwa, a close Mugabe ally and Speaker of Parliament, and headed by Chinamasa. Ncube had the backing of Sibanda, [Renson] Gasela, [Priscilla] Misihairabwi-Mushonga, Paul Themba Nyathi and others, mainly from the western region,” Tsvangirai says in his book.

“I understood that Ncube and Chinamasa were working with Pearson Mbalekwa, a relation of Mnangagwa from Zvishavane and with Chinamasa’s good friend Jonathan Moyo. It appeared Zanu PF had managed to convince Ncube and some parliamentarians that to secure the interests of the Ndebele minority, it was important that they join hands with an influential section of Zanu PF.

“By ‘influential’, I mean a faction that enjoyed the backing of the military and South African President Thabo Mbeki.”

“My colleagues were simply riding on my popularity, in the forlorn hope that part of it would rub off on to them. They were uncomfortable with me as a person and a leader and I sensed that they wanted to build their political careers using Tsvangirai as a seat warmer who could ultimately be dislodged as soon as the right opportunity presented itself. Little did they know how easily I saw through that.”

“I knew that Mbeki was in favour of a party split. He wanted the splinter group to join a Zanu PF faction in the hope that their combined force would weaken and eventually destroy the remaining MDC. Mbeki would then pronounce to the world that he had resolved the Zimbabwean crisis.”

Tsvangirai claims Ncube “saw an opportunity to undermine me by advancing his own and Mbeki’s strategy”, adding: “I had suppressed the split for the sake of the party and the country. They thought I would do anything to prevent a split. I hung on to my thoughts until the situation became so serious that a split had to be faced.”

Those who would like to order copies of this explosive book can contact Edith on +263772248568.

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