Tsvangirai ‘affair’ couple rubbish the story

The man who the Herald newspaper is claiming complained in a Bulawayo court that his wife wanted to divorce him in order continue an affair with Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has flatly denied ever making such remarks.

The Saturday edition of the state owned Herald newspaper reported that  Aquilina Pamberi, who runs a boutique in Bulawayo, wanted to divorce her husband of twelve years, Jacob Mandeya, a local businessman. The paper reported that Mandeya said his wife wanted to pave the way for Tsvangirai.

But Mandeya has blown up the concocted smear campaign, telling his wife during a taped conversation, “I don’t know where that came from. You know I never said such a thing.” Aquilina is now threatening to sue the Herald saying “I feel violated by these falsehoods which have been used to tarnish the name of Tsvangirai.”

The state machinery has been desperate to pin something on Tsvangirai along the lines of a sex scandal. Only last year a South African paper ran a story claiming the First Lady Grace Mugabe was having an affair with the Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono. A few months later the state papers are trying to do a number on the Prime Minister?

Tsvangirai’s spokesman Luke Tamborinyoka said the story was ‘highly defamatory’ and only meant to ‘besmirch’ the person and office of the Prime Minister. He said the article was written ‘using fictitious unnamed sources outside official court documents and deliberations,’ adding that the paper was trying to boost its waning sales figures by ‘concocting stories’ and using Tsvangirai’s name.

‘We had hoped that the public media would use the new political dispensation to embark on responsible journalism and to refrain from publishing perfidy and outright lies. It is not in the national interest to engage in needless journalistic persecution of popularly elected national leaders,’ Tamborinyoka said. He said that responsible journalists cannot do the dirty work for unpopular politicians.