Last week I came across a piece, “Till Mujuru’s sins be white as snow” written by one of the many shadowy columnists in the Herald newspaper under a banner “Radar”.
My sources at the Herald told me it is none other than George Charamba, who now shuttles between Nathaniel Manheru and Radar, depending on which political opponents he would be wishing to attack.
The piece, which was premised on some rudimentary and often pathetic appreciation of the word of God as contained in Isaiah 1v 18 and such other verses that the author contrivingly, tried to contextualise in his attack of Jealousy Mawarire and Dr Joice Mujuru, was a response to the articles I have done to put on record the truth about Dr Mujuru and the many allegations that have been wrongly advanced by her political foes especially from Zanu-PF and President Robert Mugabe’s many bootlickers.
Yes, there are griots, praise singers around Mugabe who, after a session of unbridled blasphemous bootlicking, help themselves to national resources through outright theft, shady empowerment deals and some such murky activities whether its community share trusts, operationalization of the indigenisation and economic empowerment act among the many looting vehicles that Mugabe and his bootlickers have put in place to expropriate national assets and the country’s natural resources, be it diamonds or even elephants, lions and rhinoceroses.
Mawarire’s crime, according to the “Radar Charamba”, is that he is “digging deep the archives and dusting up every piece of evidence that will exonerate his Joice. For this reason, Mawarire “is most likely blasphemous” because Dr Mujuru “most likely sinned against God, and he (Mawarire) cannot replace Him (God) and seek to wash her sins white.”
Other than exhibiting doubt about the things he was writing about as shown by his continual use of the word “likely”, Radar Charamba admits that indeed evidence is replete which exonerates Mujuru from all the allegations levelled against her.
What is interesting, however, in Charamba’s “Radar” piece is the admission that “Mawarire is digging deep the archives and dusting up every piece of evidence.” Charamba inadvertently admits that Mawarire is not cooking up or contriving some such evidence to exonerate Dr Mujuru from the many false allegations propagated by a coterie of Mugabe’s bootlickers.
Admittedly, the evidence is there and what Mawarire is doing is just “digging deep the archives and dusting” it for all and sundry to see. And, surely, digging deep archives and coming up with evidence to exonerate my wrongly vilified principal is never blasphemous.
It is, primarily, doing research and every researcher relies on the empirical data he unearths to advance his cause and in so doing, I have never claimed to be God, his young brother or any such acquaintance save for the fact that I am his child, begotten of him through the ministration of his word by his servant Prophet Emmanuel Makandiwa, a preacher and prophet he has assigned in my life.
It is a fact which Radar Charamba knows, that Jonathan Moyo exonerated Mujuru of any wrong doing when he told Steven Sakkur of the BBC in a HardTalk interview in January 2015, that all those allegations that First Lady Grace Mugabe hysterically propagated through the so-called “meet the people rallies” were as worthless and fake as her PhD degree.
They were just political banter in the same way the First Lady’s attainment of the same PhD was a joke of the year.
It is also a fact, and Charamba knows this too, that Godfrey Tsenengamu, Godfrey Gomwe and Vengai Musengi, in an interview with ANN7 have apologised to Dr Mujuru, and Dr Mujuru has a DVD of the same interview. The trio apologised for being used by Mugabe to falsely accuse her on allegations of witchcraft, corruption and plotting to assassinate Mugabe. This evidence is there and a lot such, we shall share with Zimbabweans in due course.
Back to Radar Charamba’s Herald article, I was particularly interested in one statement that Charamba makes which is fundamental. He says “it is clear that God does not like the idea of people worshipping other gods.” This is true, and as Zimbabwe People First, we have come out categorically clear that, “we say ‘No’ to worshipping of leaders which we equate to idolatry.”
We have also made it clear as a party, that “notwithstanding our non-negotiable independence, we declare our total dependence on God. He is the only One we shall praise and worship, not any individual.”
This is a value that we hold dearly as a party. It is expressed in our Motto “Worship, Respect, Support.” It is therefore surprising that individuals like Charamba who hail from an organisation that worships an individual, an organisation that deifies Mugabe, seek to tutor us on the subject of blasphemy and God being a jealous God who does not brook the idea of his people worshipping other gods.
Charamba, if he did not know, belongs to a cult called Zanu-PF where Mugabe is their god, according to Saviour Kasukuwere, the National Political Commissar of the party.
Kasukuwere told Zanu-PF supporters, while launching Auxilia Mnangagwa’s parliamentary election campaign in Chirumanzi-Zibagwe last year, that “there is only one Zanu PF and it is the one which is led by our god, President Robert Mugabe,”
If there is someone in this country who wants to play god, it is Mugabe who doesn’t chide his subordinates when they declare him a deity.
On the contrary, ZimPF is led by Dr Mujuru, a devout Christian who understands that no human being, dead or alive, can play the role of God.
It is in this vein that Dr Mujuru understands that if she has sinned against God, as is the case with any individual, the right thing to do is to seek the face of God in true repentance and after that her sins, whether as red as crimson, will all be washed as white as snow.
This is a personal and private exercise with her God which does not take forever before one is forgiven. We all have that privilege as children of God, to seek his face and ask for forgiveness, that is, if we don’t take ourselves to be gods like what happens with Zanu-PF and Mugabe.
While Dr Mujuru has a role, at a personal level, like any individual who doesn’t presume to be a god, to ask God for forgiveness, it is the role of others who understand her political and social life to correct the many distortions that her political opponents have been propagating for political expediency.
It is that which I, Jealousy Mawarire, will do, to my uttermost ability and for that, I make no apologies to Charamba or his god, Robert Mugabe.
I am fully aware that Charamba and his clones in the state media are out to paint a false picture that “Joice Mujuru has been identifiable with corruption and greed which even her expulsion from Zanu-PF has not cleansed her of,” but in equal measure, we shall make Zimbabweans know the real greedy among us. In our endeavour to correct the many lies that have been broadcast about Dr Mujuru, we shall expose the real corrupt people in our midst.
It is a fact that Dr Mujuru is not a greedy person and for this reason, she did not line up to get any farm during the land reform programme despite the fact that she, and her late husband, lost two farms that she bought in 1985, Kumurinje and Kadogen farms in the Shamva area. She was content that the one farm that General Solomon Mujuru got would suffice for her and her husband.
Unlike some greedy, so-called Dr Amai, who is in the habit of taking all prime land that she sets her eyes on, regardless of the fact that some black Zimbabweans are now settled on the same land, Dr Mujuru and her husband got only one farm during the land reform programme despite the fact that they had lost two of their farms to the same programme.
It is also a fact that where the Mujurus had more than 700 hectares of arable, red clay soils with title deeds, the widowed Dr Mujuru now has less than 500 arable hectares of sandy loom without title. On the other hand, President Mugabe and his wife, from being landless in 1999, now own more than 33 farms with a total hectarage of 76 000.
These are stubborn facts on the ground and many Zimbabweans who care to know, understand that President Mugabe and his wife are multiple farm owners who did not just loot the country’s land, but have been trying, through parliament, to force Zimbabweans to pay for personal loans that they took from banks to invest on the farms that they invaded. That is what is called greedy Mr Charamba.
We have also observed some veiled insinuations and attempts at questioning Dr Mujuru’s morality. It is surely a cause of concern not only to Dr Mujuru, but to all those that fight for gender equality and women’s rights, that when female politicians rise to the occasion, some misogynists like Charamba seek to play voyeurs who peep into their sexuality and sexual lives.
It is a fact that Dr Mujuru has been widowed for close to five years now and has carried herself with dignity and uttermost respect for her late husband and his family. She has not been involved in any scandal save for the lies propagated by mentally unsound individuals who, themselves, failed to keep their marriage vows and bore children for married men while they were still under monogamous marriage contracts.
Dr Mujuru has done so much for this country and its womenfolk that it is ironic that women are being hired by power hungry male politicians to vilify her.
As Minister of State (Community Development and Women’s Affairs) she introduced a strategy to speed up the advancement of women’s issues.
According to the Herald 26 September 1985, the programme called for a “realisation that the development of women was a key factor to general development of a society because of women’s central role in the family and their numerical majority in society.”
The paper also adds that the strategy was aimed at “strengthening government’s will to devise policies, avail resources and programmes that would benefit women.”
As Minister of State (Community Development and Women’s Affairs), Dr Mujuru also championed the enactment of key legislation that had fundamental transformational benefits to the status and well-being of women in this country and the least that women should do to her, is to refuse to be used by men to vilify one of their own.
The Legal Age of Majority Act of 1982, which allowed women who had passed the age of 18 to enter into any contracts without the consent of a male guardian, was championed by Dr Mujuru. She was also instrumental in the enactment of the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1985 which recognised, for the first time, both the direct and indirect contribution of a woman to family prosperity.
The Act gave the courts the power to equitably distribute the family wealth according to the contribution, both direct and indirect, in the event of divorce and to determine which spouse was to get maintenance fees.
During her time in government, Dr Mujuru also championed the enactment of laws that ensured women got paid their full salaries while on maternity leave, equal pension contribution for both men and women and separate taxation for married people.
As a young, poorly educated minister of government in 1980, she championed adult literacy to benefit both men and women who had been disadvantaged educationally, by the colonial and patriarchal systems.
She, personally, undertook studies from ‘O’ levels until she attained her Doctorate degree recently, not only for her personal development, but to give inspiration to young women and show them that they, too, could overcome seemingly insurmountable social, cultural, economic and political obstacles and still attain what they desire to be in life.
Dr Mujuru’s contribution in government, and particularly to the women’s cause is a brilliant example which shows that the role of individuals in government is not to drill boreholes and hand-out small packets of salt to villagers as Kasukuwere would want us to believe, but to provide legislative frameworks and creating an environment conducive for people to express themselves and pursue their aspirations in life. In so doing, you empower the whole country rather than a few individuals who can drink from your seasonal borehole.
Dr Mujuru did not just promote women’s issues in government but as one who became the youngest government minister at independence, she has a keen interest in the youths and how they could help in developing the country.
She laments that the older generation has betrayed the youths who, today, are a tragedy because they are not learning anything from the leadership of the older generations other than confrontation.
Dr Mujuru believes that in a democracy, there are values that need to be followed and the most critical and central to ZimPF is tolerance and for tis reason she has ensured that in ZimPF we build an institution that promotes constructive, peaceful divergence of views and that “ it is never “My Way” or “No Way” and that the youths play an important role in crafting their own future and that this future is guaranteed if the youths accept that every other citizen should be allowed to create that future.
Next week, I will deal extensively with Dr Mujuru’s vision on the role that youths and our Diaspora can play in Building Zimbabwe in peace.
This article was first published on Jealousy Mawarire’s blog: www.mawarirespeaks.wordpress.com
