Mugabe’s fired deputy Mujuru: “Don’t mistake my silence as weakness”

By Brian LathamJoice_Mujuru

(Bloomberg) — Joice Mujuru, ousted as Zimbabwe’s vice president in December, said she’s kept silent out of respect for the country’s founding president even after he branded her a witch and accused her of plotting to kill him.

Celebrating his 91st birthday in the resort town of Victoria Falls on Feb. 28, President Robert Mugabe told well- wishers that Mujuru had hired Nigerian shamans and performed a ritual aimed at killing or ousting him so that she could become the country’s leader.

“I’ve kept quiet out of respect for President Mugabe, but people mustn’t mistake my silence as weakness or guilt,” Mujuru said in an interview on March 4 from Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital. “I’m not weak and I’m not guilty.”

Accusations against Mujuru, started in part by Mugabe’s wife, Grace, last year, led to her removal as vice president of both the country and his ruling Zimbabwe African National Union- Patriotic Front party. Mujuru’s ousting alongside the firing of allies, including party spokesman Rugare Gumbo and party administration secretary Didymus Mutasa, was seen by the state- controlled press as a victory for a ruling party faction led by newly appointed Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

At least 17 other senior party officials, including Cabinet ministers, who were accused of being Mujuru loyalists by state media, have been removed from office in a purge strengthening Mnangagwa’s power base.

“I’m a Christian woman, born into the Apostolic Church, the president knows that,” Mujuru, 59, said. “I don’t practice witchcraft.”

Spill Blood

Mujuru, who fought in the country’s liberation war under a nom de guerre that translates as Comrade Spill Blood, joined Mugabe’s cabinet in 1980 as youth minister and rose to the position of deputy president in 2004. Her husband, Solomon Mujuru, died in a fire at his house in Beatrice, near Harare, in 2011. He was the commander of Mugabe’s liberation army.

Mugabe has led the country since 1980 when elections marked the end of an armed struggle against white minority rule. Between 2000, when Mugabe started a program of violent land seizures from white commercial farmers, and last year the economy halved in size, according to the government.

Mutasa and Gumbo, who are suing both Mugabe and Zanu-PF over their removal from office through the High Court in Harare, say the dismissals breached Zanu-PF’s constitution. Mujuru hasn’t joined the legal fray.

“Ever since the First Lady entered politics, a major shift occurred in the party,” Mutasa said by telephone from Harare. “We encountered disrespect, malice, slander and defamation like never before, worse even than anything you might hear from opposition parties.”

‘Presidential Fantasy’

Simon Khaya Moyo, the ruling party’s spokesman, said in a telephone interview from Harare that he couldn’t comment on legal action being taken by Mutasa because the cases are in process. Mugabe’s presidential spokesman George Charamba didn’t answer calls to his phone when Bloomberg News sought comment.

“I’m ready to be taken before the courts if they think there’s a real story, if they think I was trying to kill or remove President Mugabe,” Mujuru said. “I haven’t betrayed anyone, not him, not the leadership, not the party. This is some kind of presidential fantasy.”

 

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