I’m ready for arrest says defiant Mujuru

HARARE – Former Vice President Joice Mujuru has said that she is not afraid of being arrested by President Robert Mugabe’s regime.

Mujuru was reacting to weekend reports that her arrest for allegedly plotting to assassinate President Mugabe was imminent.

The widow of the late General Solomon Mujuru is also facing allegations of corruption, abuse of office and extortion. Many see the allegations as an attempt to derail what had seemed her inevitable rise to the presidency.

In a brief interview with the independent Daily News newspaper, Mujuru said she was at peace with the world and would face whatever was thrown her way.

“It is not a problem,” she said of the speculation around her supposedly imminent arrest by the police. Only last month Mujuru told the same paper “Hazvina basa izvo (That does not matter)”.

Last week former Presidential Affairs minister Didymus Mutasa told the Mail & Guardian newspaper that Mujuru “should not have been silent” when she was being persecuted but revealed “I think she is probably doing something quietly through the courts.”

Mutasa, a veteran nationalist who also lost his position as Zanu PF Secretary for Administration after being accused of belonging to Mujuru’s faction and taking part in the assassination plot, was full of praise for the former Vice President.

“She is a real freedom fighter. She is a very different character from [higher education minister] Oppah Muchinguri. I suppose it is because of those differences that she was selected first as vice-president, and not Muchinguri,” Mutasa said.