President Robert Mugabe’s wife beating spokesman, George Charamba, is allegedly leading a vicious smear campaign against former Vice President Joice Mujuru who now leads the opposition Zimbabwe People First (ZimPF) party.
On Sunday the state owned Sunday Mail newspaper, said to be controlled directly by Charamba (also the Permanent Secretary in the Information Ministry), led with a story claiming Mujuru 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 were made a few days after Mujuru publicly dismissed President Mugabe as a fake war veteran who never held a non de guerre.
The onslaught against Mujuru by Charamba is seen as an attempt to fight back on behalf of his boss. It has however also brought into question Charamba’s own past, especially his relationship with women. On the 24th February 2005 Charamba who has a black belt in Karate battered his wife Rudo after she accused him of infecting her with the HIV virus.
Although Charamba was arrested for the savage assault, Mugabe directed police commissioner Augustine Chihuri to see to it that the case was dropped. The official spin put on the matter was that Rudo Charamba had withdrawn the charges. Charamba’s lawyer then was Johannes Tomana, who is now the country’s suspended Prosecutor General.
Mujuru smear campaign
In the Sunday Mail story published today, 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.
Outrage over Mujuru story
Writing on Facebook journalist Chofamba Sithole said: “George Charamba has to be the worst misogynist ever to occupy public office in Zimbabwe! I cannot believe the depths of moral depravity he’s going to in his bid to shore up the wilting fortunes of Robert Mugabe, the man who has given him fortune and infamy.
“Women combatants during the war had it rough. In the mid 90s filmmaker Simon Bright produced the feature film Flame, which exposed the abuses, including sexual, of female combatants such as Joice Mujuru, Oppah Muchinguri, Margaret Dongo and many others, at the hands of their male colleagues and commanders.
See the movie Flame, written and directed by Ingrid Sinclair
“It’s disheartening that so many decades after that war, and without having acknowledged the abuses suffered by female combatants, the government’s biggest national newspaper is used to tear open those wounds to rub salt into them. What does this say about Mugabe and his government’s attitude towards women in general?
“Why is sex used to shame women? What kind of mindset contrives such puerile schemes? I’m equally appalled by my own journalist colleagues Caesar Zvayi and Tichaona Zindoga – honestly, do you really need to cheer and applaud everything they do? And what does that say of your own attitudes toward your female colleagues in the newsroom?” Sithole said.
Political commentator and writer Maynard Manyowa said “there are no words to explain just how retarded, inhumane, foolish, and evil such a narrative is, even as a joke.
“In a country where sexual assault is such a huge problem, it is disheartening to read views as misogynistic and barbaric as these.
“It is common place that the entire story is a lie, and a ridiculous one for the matter. Even in the world of make believe, Harry Porter and Peter Pan, such lies would be rejected.
“That the editors at a national paper genuinely believe that Rhodesian forces stumbled upon a couple enjoying the forbidden fruit, and went on to lose a helicopter to a fully naked man, before somehow killing him is proof that someone’s imagination is working faster than their brain,” Manyowa wrote (see full article here).
Political commentator Dr Pedzisai Ruhanya said “The liberation war is discredited on account of raping committed young girls who were mostly teenagers when they fought in the struggle for Zimbabwe. Shame on ZANU PF and its bogus rapist liberators.
“The attacks on Joice Mujuru by one Rutanhire and The Sunday Lies newspaper expose the dark and criminal side of these fake war veterans. These criminals committed statutory rape and they should account.
“A decent and organized society must demand a retraction and apology from these morons. These people have attacked our collective humanity given the atrocities they committed against women in the name of the struggle,” Dr Ruhanya said.
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
