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| Africa Subsaharan |
| Wife of Zimbabwean general on warpath over website report |
| 2008-05-20 |
| Hans Pienaar The wife of a top Zimbabwean general, Jocelyn Chiwenga, has stoked the Internet flames with her threat to sue a Zimbabwean website for publishing responses to a report on how she assaulted an international news agency photographer. Entries on the foreign-based website of ZimDaily.com referred to her as a former prostitute, while an article carried lurid details of her activities as a frequenter of nightclubs before she was married to General Constantine Chiwenga, head of Zimbabwe's armed forces. One participant wrote, against a background of warnings of a coup by former information minister Jonathan Moyo: "If army commander General Constantine Chiwenga happens to do the right thing to save Zimbabwe by deposing Mugabe through a military coup, which he can easily do without firing a bullet like Musharraf of Pakistan, then Jocelyn will be our first lady." He signed his entry as "lance-corporal, HQ presidential guard". Jocelyn Chiwenga wants US$1- billion (about R7,1-billion) from the website. Both Chiwengas are blacklisted by the US government, and so the proceeds of a suit would not be able to be given to her. The website also published an e-mail she wrote to the website, which is so ridden with expletives of a sexual nature that Web masters refuse access to the entry. "Her e-mail was pregnant with spelling errors and the worst of grammatical errors reminiscent of Idi Amin's dinner speech organised in his honour by the Queen in 1972. (It is said that after the speech, the Queen asked the journalists present what on earth Amin had said. They replied that it was in a language similar to English.)" The trouble started in a supermarket last week when Jocelyn Chiwenga, out to scour empty supermarket shelves with a bodyguard in tow, bumped into opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. The Movement for Democratic Change leader was there to inspect the effects on President Mugabe's latest economic edicts. Before the startled eyes and cameras of the international media, Chiwenga began shouting at Tsvangirai, calling him the "dog who has caused all the suffering in the country". According to reports, she then ordered the managers of the Makro shop to close, threatening to call in soldiers via her husband to deal with Tsvangirai and the journalists following him. Later, on the Voice of America, she boasted about "Tsvangirai running from me". Photographer Tsvangirai Mukwazi is reported to have been trapped in the supermarket, where he was allegedly slapped and insulted by Chiwenga. State radio said the army commander's wife was furious to hear Tsvangirai, who she said had called for sanctions on Zimbabwe, referred to as the president. The MDC leader is regularly referred to as "president" by his bodyguards and fellow MDC members. Chiwenga has announced she will sue the MDC leader and independent news services that have carried reports on the alleged incident. She has courted controversy for several years. She first made headlines when her business partner in the Zimsafe company, a Dutch national, was deported for a crime that many say he did not commit. Zimsafe was the supplier of luminous clothing for Zimbabwean police and soldiers manning roadblocks. Shortly afterwards, she married General Chiwenga. In 2002 she allegedly told a farmer she had not tasted white blood in years, before seizing his land at gunpoint. She gained further notoriety when she assaulted media lawyer Gugulethu Moyo at a police station. Today, she is at the centre of the controversial hunting industry, in which unknown Zimbabwean landowners earn up to US$30-million by allowing US hunters to shoot big game. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #1 Wow. This gal makes Michelle Obama look tame by comparison. |
| Posted by: Rambler in California 2008-05-20 18:02 |