The enduring reach of Willowgate
January 25, 2009
Geoffrey Nyarota
A picture of the Chronicle senior editorial team taken in 1985: from left Don Henderson, deputy editor; Ibrahim Jogee, chief sub-editor; Geoffrey Nyarota, editor; Shaun Orange, sports editor; Edna Machirori, news editor and David Ncube, assistant editor.
SOMETHING I wrote last week appears to have angered President Robert Mugabe’s official spokesman and public relations expert.
George Charamba became so incensed as he crafted Saturday’s offering of his Nathaniel Manheru column in The Herald that he momentarily cast aside the veneer that he doesn’t read The Zimbabwe Times. Not only did he lash out angrily against an article that appeared on this website last week; he even made enraged reference to articles from days gone by.
His effort seems to have been aimed at demolishing me through one ill-conceived and rather pedestrian newspaper article.
“(Nyarota) has always regarded himself as the hero of Willowgate,” he chided, “much as some of us know better. He has always sought greatness built around that episode to which he did no more than play passive publicist. “The real hero of Willowvale is there and known, and in Government too, something Nyarota finds most inconvenient.”
Obert Mpofu
For the benefit of those not too familiar with his antics or who may not be aware of the facts, the mysterious hero of Charamba’s Willowgate hallucinations must be none other than Obert Mpofu, the outgoing Minister of Industry and International Trade. Charamba carefully refrains from mentioning Mpofu’s name because he is aware that the status that he now seeks to bestow on him in retrospect is built on a shaky foundation.
Readers of my generation may find some of this detail tedious. But such information is essential for younger readers so that they don’t fall victim to Charamba’s mendacious treatment of facts or obstinate manipulation of the truth.
What triggered off the investigation of the corruption in government that came to be known as the Willowgate Scandal in 1988 was a refund cheque that Mpofu received from Willowvale Motor Industries. The cheque had been sent to him in error. It was meant for one Alvord Mpofu after he overpaid on a new vehicle. Mpofu was then the managing director of the Zimbabwe Grain Bag Company, a company owned by Zanu-PF in Bulawayo. Willowvale had delivered to Alvord Mpofu a pick-up truck with a smaller engine than the one he paid for; hence the refund. They had, however, sent the refund cheque to the wrong Mpofu.
It was in those circumstances that Mpofu approached me with the cheque. I smelt a rat from his account of events and started an investigation that was to last three months and bring down five Cabinet ministers, two of them the third and fourth most powerful officials in the Mugabe government. One of them, Maurice Nyagumbo, committed suicide. He was my relative. It was a very traumatic experience for me. May his soul rest in peace.
If Charamba now wishes to elevate Mpofu’s legitimate curiosity 21 years ago to a retrospective act of heroism on the part of a government minister, I have no quarrel with that, notwithstanding the fact that Mpofu was not a government official at the material time, as now claimed by Charamba.
Mark Felt was revealed only in 2005 as Deep Throat, the main source of information in the Watergate Scandal, which brought President Richard Nixon’s presidency to an inglorious end back in 1974.
When Felt’s identity was revealed it was not at the expense of the reputations of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post journalists who investigated the scandal.
If Charamba’s logic is to be taken to its logical conclusion then the real heroes of the Willowgate Scandal were the workers at Willowvale Motors who compiled the list of culprits for The Chronicle and Justice Wilson Sandura who finally nailed them.
“He was an important cog in the Zanu-PF wheel,” Charamba says of me, “and became part of a cabal of trusted cadre-editors. I will not refer to errands he ran in Matabeleland, which could be a matter for another day.”
Charamba is trying to be clever by half here. To characterize the late Willie Musarurwa, the late Farai Munyuki, Tommy Sithole and myself as a cabal of trusted cadre-editors is to display blissful ignorance of events and the dynamics at play at the time. Charamba is not aware that at the time Zimbabwe Newspapers had not yet been over-run by the Ministry of Information, as it is today.
He must of necessity explain in detail the errands that I ran in Matabeleland or whose trusted editor I became. He cannot make spurious allegations and cast aspersions today and casually defer the details to another day.
What if he drops dead tomorrow?
If the government of President Robert Mugabe had information of whatever vintage with potential to compromise or damage me they would not wait for up to 21 years for Charamba to threaten to reveal that information on some unspecified date in future.
Charamba now issues these threats against me all because I repeated in an article, the proposal that a possible way out of Zimbabwe’s current political impasse could be through the installation of a transitional arrangement. Others have made this same proposal before me, notably Dr Simba Makoni just after he lost the March 29 presidential election.
Charamba does not say what he finds particularly unacceptable or outrageous about the suggestion that Sandura could become caretaker President during such transitional arrangement.
Sandura’s name easily came to my mind because the Zimbabwe Law Society had just bestowed on him its inaugural Professor Walter Joseph Kamba – Rule of Law Award. The society said this prestigious award was “a mark of distinction for exemplary, honest and creative fulfillment of duty in the development of the judiciary, strengthening of democracy and the rule of law in Zimbabwe”.
My own personal encounter with Sandura was back in 1989, when he presided over the hearings of the Sandura Commission of Inquiry, which he chaired with dignity and distinction. He acquitted himself remarkably well. I was chief witness and I was most impressed as Sandura stood his ground courageously against the fierce intimidation of some of Zimbabwe’s most powerful men of the day, Enos Mzombi Nkala and Callistus Ndlovu.
Sandura’s moment of crowning glory arrived when he listened as the combative but humbled gods on earth confessed that they had committed perjury and lied before his commission. They instantly descended into political oblivion.
Many in the top echelons of government today are midgets alongside Sandura. His very name represents the ultimate in appropriate nomenclature. Sandura is Shona for “make change” or “cause change”.
In any case, I did not suggest that Zimbabwe rids itself of Mugabe and Tsvangirai. It appears Charamba does not fully understand the very concept of a transitional government.
I will explain. A transitional government is a provisional government in which power is vested in an emergency. It is an interim government set up when a political void has been created by the collapse of a previous administration or regime. Such a provisional government holds power until legitimate, free and fair elections are held.
By its very nature a transitional government is, therefore, only a temporary arrangement.
In the case of Zimbabwe both Zanu-PF and the MDC would participate in the new elections along with other political parties that might wish to try their luck at the polls.
Whoever emerges as winner after this transparent process would then become the next President of Zimbabwe. The contesting parties, Zanu-PF especially, would be required to pledge their acceptance of the election results.
It is pertinent to refer here to a video taped interview in which Mugabe was asked whether he would be prepared to give up power if someone other than himself won the 1980 elections.
Mugabe, after initially beating about the bush, responded: “The principle is there. Whoever wins the election naturally becomes leader. Whichever party wins the election naturally forms the government. We are prepared that the Bishop (Abel Muzorewa) will not win, but if miracles happen and the Bishop won, well fine. He should lead the country, why not. Yes, we are for a democratic system and in a democratic system you have to accept, you see, the ehhh, verdict of the people.”
That was in Mugabe in 1979.
The whole transitional process now proposed would be supervised, say by the United Nations and the African Union, with observers from all over the world on hand to vouch for the legitimacy of the whole process.
If Mugabe wins after such a transparent process, “Well fine. He should lead the country, why not.”
Otherwise it would be farewell to Charamba. Fortunately he has his government-facilitated chicken project in Buhera to fall back on. But he would have to surrender most of those government vehicles.
Charamba goes on: “I boldly state that Nyarota’s piece immodestly suggests himself as part of the leadership for his never-never interim regime.
“By suggesting Justice Sandura as a fitting leader of an arrangement he proposes, and all that based on the good judge’s role in the Willowvale Motor Industries Inquiry, Nyarota is implying his own appointability (sic) to this monstrous creature he proposes.”
Charamba amazes most people, with the notable exception of President Mugabe. I am flummoxed, nay, insulted, that Charamba in his claimed wisdom regards it as totally inconceivable that I can envisage a role for myself in politics.
If David Karimanzira, Simba Makoni and Ibbo Mandaza, my own peers; as well as Joseph Chinotimba, the late Border Gezi and many others of dubious political pedigree, can become politicians, why can I not?
If Vice President Joseph Msika and others of his ripe old age as well as Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga, Tendai Biti and Arthur Mutambara, many years my juniors, can all participate in politics, why can I not join them, should I ever wish to?
Above all, if a failed civil servant, Charamba, can entertain impossible political ambitions, why can a newspaper editor not aspire to political office?
Charamba states further: “Or to remind anyone about his role in the subterranean or arcane politics of the time — some of which involved Rhodesian elements — to which he has since made a grand confession. Not even his current role in sprucing up Tsvangirai’s image, including his latest trip to Gaborone.
“Or his latest public relations effort in defence of Selous Scouts whose project was recently busted.”
Charamba should feel absolutely free to speak or write in detail about my “role in the subterranean or arcane politics of the time, some of which involved Rhodesian elements”, what ever that means. Why does he speak in tongues on such an important issue? Let the public have the details, including a verbatim quotation of my so-called grand confession.
Having done that, he should then narrate the details of my public relations effort in defence of Selous Scouts. I can only imagine that Charamba, being the ultimate conspiracy theorist, was referring to an article which was posted on this website recently. It was the story of a helicopter-borne attack by the security forces on Kudu Creek camp site in Ruwa which we carried, relying on accounts given by eye-witnesses who were held during the operation. Neither Charamba nor anyone else in government ever challenged our article or gave us a different version of events. We have, therefore, assumed that our article was accurate.
Nonetheless, my only involvement in this story was to process an article submitted by a correspondent. I do not know the people involved or their status as Selous Scouts. I simply found the story to be in the public interest.
But on a more serious note, I am genuinely perturbed to hear that Selous Scouts still flourish in Zimbabwe so close to Harare three decades after independence.
This situation calls for an urgent investigation and heads must roll both at the CIO and in the top echelons of the war veteran community.
Finally, I have no assignment, current or past, to spruce up the image of Morgan Tsvangirai. In one breath Charamba says I have ditched Tsvangirai in favour of Wilson Sandura. In the next he claims I have a current role in sprucing up the image of Tsvangirai.
Here are the facts. I travelled to Francistown, Botswana, in December 2008 to run a training workshop for Zimbabwean journalists. At the conception of this initiative early in 2008 the workshop was scheduled to be held in Nyanga, Zimbabwe.
In moments of sublime optimism I had assumed that President Mugabe, Charamba and Zanu-PF would allow the process of political change to reach its logical conclusion after the elections. Like many others I had expected that peace and normalcy would return to Zimbabwe then.
When the machinations of Charamba and his principals denied Zimbabwe that cherished goal I changed strategy – there had always been a B Plan – and relocated the workshop to Francistown. UNESCO and IDASA of South Africa co-funded the workshop. These organisations would not agree to support a mission to spruce up the image of an individual politician, especially one who had recently won an election.
There was nothing clandestine about this project.
Since Tsvangirai was in town when I stopped over in Gaborone on my return journey I paid a courtesy call on him. I seized the opportunity to interview him. I would do the same with President Mugabe if Charamba would allow me. It is President Mugabe who is in dire need of an image sprucing-up exercise, far beyond the capability of those currently charged with that responsibility, Charamba himself, in particular.
While in Botswana I even tried to pin down the location of the training facility or facilities where Zimbabwean bandits are allegedly receiving training in terrorism, which Charamba and others have been shrilly trumpeting.
I drew blanks all round.
Lastly, I must add that the office of the President of Zimbabwe clearly requires the services of a mature, appropriately qualified and competent public relations practitioner. In any case, Charamba should not forget that he holds office today merely through the expedience of the extended ballot-counting process, lasting from March 30 to May 2, 2008. That is when the result of the presidential election was finally announced, five weeks to the day later.
As for Zimbabwe Newspapers, the company needs a brand new board of directors.
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Actually I agree with that. I hope the editor sees this and perhaps gives us a re-run of how events unfolded.
It was a brilliant piece of investigated journalism. Its a pity that, as a result, the government clamped down on the press and we would never really have any exposes of that nature again in Zimbabwe.
thanks !! very helpful post!