By Tatenda Dewa | Harare Bureau |
Political opponents of former vice president, Joice Mujuru, have made sensational claims that she never fought at the front during the liberation struggle but was a serial bed hopper who got promoted for her sexual relationships with war commanders.
This is despite archived war time photographs of Mujuru in combat fatigue and in action during the guerilla campaign against colonial rule that brought independence in 1980.
The claims have come just after Mujuru publicly dismissed President Robert Mugabe as a fake war veteran who never held a non de guerre.
Also read: Mugabe’s wife-beating spokesman behind Mujuru smear campaign
George Rutanhire, a former commander during the war, accused Mujuru of indirectly causing the death of a war section commander around 1973 when the guerillas were attacked as the two were having sex.
He said Mujuru was then a teenage female war assistant or “chimbwido” in the Chahwanda area in Mashonaland Central, her rural home area, and fell in love with another commander named as Joseph Chipembere who was leading a mission in the province.
“The chimbwidos prepared food for Chipembere and his comrades. Chipembere became interested in Runaida and they became intimate when he finished eating. Whilst other comrades were relaxing, Joice and Chipembere took that opportunity to enjoy the forbidden fruit.
“During the intercourse, a battle broke out (with Rhodesian forces) and Chipembere fought the better part of that battle whilst he was naked,” said Rutanhire.
He dismissed a claim that Mujuru downed a helicopter, saying instead that her “lover” did it during contact but died in the battle.
“This nonsense that (Dr Mujuru) brought down a helicopter, I don’t know where people got that from. It was Chipembere who did that, and unfortunately he was a casualty of that battle,” claimed Rutanhire.
He added: “This woman (Mujuru), contributed to the deaths of many people because she loved men too much.”
He said, after the battle, it was decided that Mujuru must join the war and was carried to Zambia “on a stretcher..; because apart from being lazy, some comrades felt she was a commander’s lover and was supposed to be taken care of”.
Rutanhire said Luke Mushore, the current member of parliament for Muzarabani North, was among the cadres who took turns ferrying Mujuru on the stretcher.
Mushore supported the claim, saying: “At the time, she had a big body and so when we were about to leave, some comrades said that we should leave her. As the commander, I stood my ground and said no, we were going with her.”
The legislator alleged Mujuru entered into another relationship with a combatant called Timothy Gutura during her stay in Zambia.
“I got to know these details because when they came to the rear, they had to explain what happened and write reports, and I was a commander in the commissariat,” said Mushore.
Subsequently, added the legislator, the former vice president who was expelled from Zanu PF in early 2015 for allegedly trying to topple Mugabe, met Solomon Mujuru who became her husband during the war.
Mujuru was a top army commander under the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) and just underwent military training while her alleged former lover, Gutura, was being repeatedly sent back to the war front where many fighters were dying.
“After training, she was never deployed to the front because, remember, she was now married to Mujuru,” said Mushore.
Mujuru became a cabinet minister in her twenties at independence, hardly able to speak in English, but she now boasts a doctoral degree.
Her husband died in a mysterious inferno in 2011, amid speculation that he was assassinated by rivals in Zanu PF. Nehanda Radio
