HARARE – President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF has accused the opposition of whipping up fake outrage over 91-year-old president’s daughter, Bona, chaperoning the nonagenarian and occupying a high and visible position during his official engagements in Japan.
Pictures of Mugabe and Bona in meetings with Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, on the sidelines of the UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction being held in Japan, have been splashed around the world over the past few days, raising eyebrows back home about whether the strongman was turning Zimbabwe into a monarchy.
While Mugabe’s spokesperson George Charamba was unreachable for comment on Monday, junior Zanu PF spokesperson Psychology Maziwisa said in a statement yesterday that the ruling party had “noticed with great pity the rather desperate attempt by Mr Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC-T party to make issue with Madam Bona Mugabe’s trip to Japan in which she accompanied her father, and our dearest leader, president Robert Mugabe.”
“Not only is this another sign of Mr Tsvangirai’s pettiness, it’s a demonstration that he is clueless about what happens in the global political sphere, especially since there is no law, domestic or international, that precludes a head of state from travelling with his or her daughter on state visits,” Maziwisa said in the statement.
Ordinarily, Mugabe is accompanied in his formal meetings by his ministers, and by Grace on social engagements. But on this occasion, Bona is seen in one of the pictures seating on Mugabe’s right while Foreign Affairs minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi is seated on his left with Local Government minister Ignatius Chombo.
It was not immediately clear if Bona was merely acting as the increasingly frail Mugabe’s caregiver on this visit — as Grace recuperates from her recent minor operation undertaken in Singapore — or if she has quietly joined government as an advisor to her father.
But opposition political parties moved to savage the nonagenarian leader, expressing disquiet with the presence of the president’s daughter — who recently married pilot Simba Chikore in a lavish wedding in Harare — at his official engagements in Sendai, Japan.
MDC spokesperson, Obert Gutu, accused Mugabe of “effectively privatising” the country.
“This clearly shows that the State has been virtually privatised by the Mugabe dynasty. Robert Mugabe thinks that he is Zimbabwe and that Zimbabwe is Robert Mugabe,” Gutu said.
“As the MDC, we strongly condemn the privatisation of the State by the crumbling and kleptocratic Mugabe regime.
“There’s absolutely no justification why one Bona Mugabe-Chikore should have been included as part of the official government delegation to Japan. Last time I checked, Bona is not a government official.
“Why, therefore, should State funds be utilised to fund her jamboree to Japan,” Gutu thundered.
Maziwisa said they do not expect Tsvangirai’s MDC to know that the president is entitled to travel with his daughter because he has never been a head of State himself.
Maziwisa claimed Tsvangirai was “unlikely ever to become one in his lifetime”, but said they reasonably expect that he should be acquainted with these basic facts because they are a matter of public record.
“It’s really not too much to ask from someone who has a well-known dream of one day becoming Zimbabwe’s head of state,” Maziwisa said.
“It is a matter of public record, for instance, that former US President Bill Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea, not only attended incalculable state meetings and functions with her father, she in fact, when her mother was away campaigning, became the focal point at White House where she received several foreign dignitaries.
“Madam Bona Mugabe has not done anything nearly as much. We refuse to buy into the narrative that for as long as it’s president Mugabe doing it — no matter how perfectly lawful it is, it’s wrong, but if it’s Bill Clinton doing it it’s cool. It’s a barbaric way of doing politics.”
Added Maziwisa: “The fact of the matter is that Tsvangirai needs to mind his miserable political business.
“Isn’t it amazing that he has become so desperate for attention that he wants to generate headlines even with the pettiest of issues?
“It is a very sad situation indeed and a clear sign that Mr Tsvangirai might just be beginning to see that his political career is drawing to an unhappy end.”
Maziwisa said while Mugabe was travelling abroad with his daughter, “Tsvangirai has travelled on innumerable foreign missions with concubines, most of whom are young enough to be his daughters. If he sees glory in that, then shame on him,” Maziwisa said.
Tsvangirai, whose first wife, Susan, died in a car crash in March 2009, was linked with a string of women in the aftermath of his spouse’s death and had to deal with claims that he fathered a child with a 23-year-old Bulawayo woman.
But the father-of-six finally settled down with the imposing Elizabeth Macheka — daughter of Zanu PF central committee member and former Chitungwiza Mayor Joseph Macheka.
The couple moved into a plush pad in the A-list neighbourhood of Highlands three years ago ahead of their September 2012 wedding.
Maziwisa said Tsvangirai “needs to shut up and concentrate on sharpening his leadership skills.”
“Make no mistake, we are not at all perturbed by this,” he said. “As far as we are concerned, Chimpanzees scream, dogs bark and Morgan Tsvangirai talks nonsense.”
Source: Daily News
