Still no charges against Mujuru

By Tendai Kamhungira

Former vice president and National People’s Party (NPP) leader Joice Mujuru has said no criminal charges have been brought over allegations of corruption levelled against her in 2014, claiming the accusations were “politically motivated”.

Corruption accusations against Mujuru were first raised by First Lady Grace Mugabe who, during countrywide rallies and meetings, accused the then vice president of abuse of office, subversion, extortion, illicit underworld diamond dealings, blackmailing corporates to grab 10 percent equities and corruption in general.

In his opening remarks to delegates at the 6th Zanu PF congress in Harare in 2014, Mugabe literally said Mujuru was a “thief” who had betrayed the trust placed on her by members of the women’s league, who in 2004 recommended she be elevated to be vice president. Three years after those accusations, her party secretary-general Gift Nyandoro said she is still waiting for her day in court.

“Only God knows when … Mujuru is going to be arrested and get arraigned before a competent court of law to answer to the clearly false and fabricated charges of sorcery and attempted murder.

“Clearly, the charges were nothing but a political hostile ejection by a first lady (Grace Mugabe) with insatiable appetite for power. Today, Zimbabweans witnesses a first lady who parades grown up men and chides them like children, calling them by their first names,” Nyandoro said in a statement.

This also comes after Mujuru sometime last year made indications that she is not losing sleep over the Zanu PF “machinations”, adding that since 2014, no docket had been opened against her and that she had never been called in for questioning in connection with the allegations of murder, witchcraft, sorcery, corruption and abuse of public office.

Mugabe’s ruling Zanu PF subsequently expelled the former vice president, completing the purging from national politics of a woman seen as frontrunner to succeed the 93-year-old leader.

Mujuru subsequently lost her positions in the party and government in December 2014 and became an ordinary Zanu PF member, before forming her own party Zimbabwe People First, which later disintegrated, resulting in her forming the NPP.

In the statement, Nyandoro said several youths had been used to malign Mujuru, in the period preceding her expulsion.

“Fortunately, some of the youths who were used in the malicious assassination of the good name and character of … Mujuru later made a public apology to Zimbabweans and revealed the evil mechanisation of political darkness,” he said.

Mujuru has revealed that Mugabe has remained in power because he keeps files of his ministers’ corrupt activities that he uses to blackmail them each time they speak against his tainted long tenure in power. Daily News