Suspended Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) group chief executive officer, Happison Muchechetere, has sensationally claimed that he was fired because he once accused Information Minister Jonathan Moyo’s close friend and former ZBC chief Alum Mpofu of being gay.
A Harare magistrate has set June 24 as the trial date for Muchechetere, who is facing charges of swindling the broadcaster of US$800 000 when he allegedly inflated the price of an Outside Broadcasting Van (OBV) procured from China.
Muchechetere (63), and out of custody on US$3 000 bail, claims there is a history of bad blood between him and Moyo. He claims Moyo in his first stint as Minister once fired him for confronting him on the rumours that Mpofu was gay.
“As a journalist I had heard rumours that he was of a different sexual orientation and I thought I would advise Jonathan about that; and I got a rude answer from him, Muchechetere said in an interview with the Zimbabwe Mail this month.
“I did not know that it would hurt him so much that the next few months later I was out of my work because of that, because I had told him that he was of a different sexual orientation and he didn’t really like that. I thought it was over but it really wasn’t over,” he added.
There have been various reports that Moyo actually recruited Mpofu as ZBC boss because the two were lovers. Mpofu later resigned in a huff after allegedly being caught in a homosexual act at a Harare nightclub owned by a ZANU PF MP.
It was reported that the resignation, which cited ‘personal reasons’, was submitted to stop an inquiry. It was further alleged that Moyo’s affair with Mpofu started in 1999 when the ZANU PF propaganda chief was at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa.
President Robert Mugabe runs a very homophobic regime in Zimbabwe. He has in the past claimed that gay people are worse than pigs and dogs and has also warned them: “We will punish you severely.”
“It is condemned by nature. It is condemned by insects and that is why I have said they are worse than pigs and dogs,” Mugabe once said.
