DisGrace Mugabe will not frighten anybody

‘Suing For What? She Has No Reputation To Protect’, says the editor of the Change Zimbabwe.com website, Makusha Mugabe.

By Makusha Mugabe

We urge Standard Editor Nevanji Madanhire to refuse to be cowed by Grace Mugabe’s reported demand of US$15 million in defamation damages from the Standard newspaper. The legal action would be another laughable law-suit if it was not clearly part of a horrid and cynical attempt by her husband’s regime to muzzle the Press.

While muzzling the Press they are also unsuccessfully trying to foist a façade that Zimbabweans do not know about the First Family and Zanu (PF) cronies’ total abuse of Zimbabwean resources.

Mugabe, or whatever his name is, has hijacked a revolution and personalized his rule over Zimbabwe, using murder, intimidation, cronyism, and propaganda; believing that Zimbabweans will just tolerate it forever. Just because the Herald and ZBC do not publish the negative about them, they think Zimbabweans do not know what is going on behind their golden curtains.

How wrong he is; and to try and use WikiLeaks allegations, which were published all over the world by almost all major news agencies, online news sites, broadsheets on all continents – and even tabloids – to try and use it to shut down the Standard, would be a vile act of dictatorship which would reverberate across the freedom-loving world, and strengthen Zimbabweans’ resolve to get rid of him and his party.

Zimbabwe is rich in diamonds, of which it is not a secret that friends and associates of the Mugabe’s have supplanted from the Zimbabwean people, not long after they partitioned all the rich and high-rainfall farms amongst themselves, rendering hundreds of thousands farm workers destitute, urban consumers dependent of South African imports, and rural folk more destitute than they were, and more dependent on international aid.

It was the cables leaked by WikiLeaks and published through major international news organisations that linked Zimbabwe’s First Shopper to diamond smuggling in the country, not The Standard. And it was not even the first time that Mrs. Mugabe’s association with Marange has been subject of Press articles.

Neither she nor all the diamond cronies named refuted or tried to correct the stories, if there was any miss-information in them. Instead they took the stance that nobody can do anything about it, that Zanu (PF) rules and will continue ruling even if it has to kill everyone in the country, but the people continue to reject them.

Now the little Press freedom that was starting to sprout following the signing of the Global Political Agreement is suddenly being shut-down again, as if this will stop Zimbabweans knowing what Mugabe and his Zanu (PF) are doing. It is no longer possible for whoever is strategising on behalf of Zanu (PF) to just put the genie back into the bottle and say:

“Sorry, we didn’t mean it when we invited all those SADC and AU heads of state to the signing of the Global Political Agreement, Sorry we don’t want a Press that scrutinizes us because we rule by blood.”

Zimbabwe is made up of very intelligent people who mostly like peace and development, and they do not like it when Government Ministers are exposed for possible corruption and the President does nothing about it.

They like it even less when the same Minister claims to be investigating corruption in local councils, and makes the councils pay the crony investigators for the politically motivated investigations, while rate-payers receive no service.

Lawyers will have a field day, and make lots of money, but Grace Mugabe could never make stand allegations that the Standard defamed her or damaged her reputation, because she has none to protect – from the day that she decided to take off her knickers for her boss and turned State House into a throne from which she would rule over Zimbabwe, plundering everything in her path like a drought goat.

Only one of the statements by her lawyer in this reported submission by George Chikumbirike is true. We invite grade six children to tell us which one. Said Chikumbirike: “The Plaintiff is of high standing in Zimbabwe. She is well regarded internationally. Further she is the wife of His Excellency the President of Zimbabwe.”

His assertion that she is the “mother of the nation” does not wash. Being President Robert Mugabe’s wife does not make her the mother of the nation. We know her as the First Shopper, the aggressive woman who attacked a photographer in Hong Kong, and the dictators’ wife who said of the more popular leader of Zimbabwe than her husband, that he will never set foot in State House.

The classified cables implicating Her Graceless were written by former US ambassador to Zimbabwe, James McGee, which made them very much interesting, and therefore of public interest and therefore newsworthy, and we do not need court processes to be abused over these clearly protected rights of journalists to inform the society of what is going on.

Makusha Mugabe is the editor of the Change Zimbabwe.com website.