By Tichaona Sibanda
The mystery Baba Jukwa Facebook character will ‘remain hidden’ until Zimbabwe becomes a democracy again, according to a journalist accused of being the vigilante.
Mxolisi Ncube, who has been implicated by the police as running the Baba Jukwa Facebook page together with his colleague Mkululi Chimoio, disclosed to SW Radio Africa that Baba Jukwa had told him he would only reveal his true identity when it becomes safe to do so.
However, Ncube believes that Baba Jukwa is an individual who may be deeply rooted in ZANU PF or someone who gets first hand information from informants within the party.
In an interview with our correspondent Ezra ‘Tshisa’ Sibanda in Johannesburg on Tuesday, Ncube denied being Baba Jukwa but admitted communicating with him on several occasions through his Facebook inbox.
‘For now only Baba Jukwa knows who he is. He refused to reveal himself to me saying that will compromise his work but promised to make himself known once the country is free from intimidation and threats of arrests,’ Ncube said.
He added: ‘As a journalist, I wrote to him introducing myself and asking him for tips on how he gets his information. We communicated on four occasions and that was all. How the state police ended up accusing me of being Baba Jukwa still baffles me.
The correspondence between him and Baba Jukwa is some of the evidence the state says it has to prove that Ncube is the real Baba Jukwa.
Ncube explained that since Baba Jukwa was attracting over 400,000 likes on his Facebook page, he had become a major source of news, hence his attempt to get a major scoop from him.
‘His page generated a lot of interest…especially on politics in Zimbabwe. And being a journalist I wanted to interview him to find out how he operates, which he declined, obviously for security reasons,’ Ncube said. SW Radio Africa
