By Munyaradzi Dube
Chitungwiza has never seen anything like it before. Sex, drugs and free booze were the order of the day at self-styled prophet Godfrey Nzira’s week-long homecoming party. Nzira, a convicted rapist, was celebrating his pardon by President Robert Mugabe.
Eye witnesses said trucks delivered beer and the faithful, vapositori, helped themselves to the illegal mbanje, while the celebration deteriorated into a sexual orgy at night. Nzira killed two cattle a day to feed the hordes who attended, and declared that his war against Mugabe’s perceived enemies had just begun.
Among those present were senior Zanu (PF) officials Webster Shamu, Minister of Information and Publicity, and Attorney General Johannes Tomana. The party at the shrine nestled deep in the indigenous trees adjacent to the Harare-Seke highway started on April 19 and continued until Easter Monday.
The entire location reverberated to music from the likes of Alick Macheso and Tongai Moyo spiced up with the music of Mbare Chimurenga. Selling beer is by no means a new phenomenon for the ailing prophet, who is a former employee of the National Breweries, now Delta. In his prime as a prophet before he joined Zanu (PF) in the 90s, Nzira ran a shebeen in Seke Unit O.
“We had a party of a lifetime and there was nothing religious about the party. It was a homecoming party for Nzira but for us it was a way of killing time with free beer and free food,” said a reveller.
Some even left the beer halls at Makoni Shopping centre, less that 500 metres away from the shrine, to enjoy the free-flowing beer – which was accompanied by mbanje for those who wished to indulge themselves in the illegal drug. But the scale of the beer drinking binge at a religious shrine left many deeply shocked. They said it was a “sacrilege that demeaned the shrine”.
“It was just too much. The noise was deafening and sleep was difficult,” said a person who lives next to the shrine. The Zimbabwean
