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(NEWZIMBABWE) Storm over Mugabe praise Chamisa note

COMMENT - True or not true, I'm still loving it. :)

Storm over Mugabe praise Chamisa note
Smoking gun ... The note allegedly written by Chamisa
by Staff Reporter
10/04/2011 00:00:00

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe is a “great man” and “special in many ways”, MDC-T spokesman and Information Communication Technology (ICT) minister Nelson Chamisa told a Zanu PF colleague during a cabinet meeting, it has been claimed.

The state-run Sunday Mail published a hand-written note which it said had been scribbled by Chamisa, and passed onto a Zanu PF minister after Mugabe defused tension in cabinet. The Mail did not say how it obtained the note, which had the name of its recipient blacked out.

But Chamisa told New Zimbabwe.com on Sunday that the note was fake and part of a wider “vilification scheme”.

“I don’t have that bad hand-writing. It’s hieroglyphics,” Chamisa told this website by telephone from Masvingo.

“We have defeated Zanu PF on the platform of facts and marketplace of ideas and they are not happy to live with that reality. They have decided that if they can’t play the game, they will play the player,” he added.

Chamisa is alleged to have written the note on March 1, the day of planned street protests by rights groups. When cabinet met for a scheduled sitting, ministers from Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC-T party are said to have protested at the heavy police deployment in the townships and Harare city centre.

Mugabe reportedly gave MDC-T ministers the floor and later advised that an extraordinary cabinet session could be convened to address their security concerns.

Apparently pleased with Mugabe’s handling of the matter, Chamisa is alleged to have penned a note to a Zanu PF colleague in which he said: “When greatness shall be measured, the man in the chair (Mugabe) shall be one among a few. I am impressed by his wisdom and deftness in dealing with matters and affairs of the State.

“I wonder who, among the aspirants, possesses even a ¼ of what he possesses. He is a great man. A man of a golden mind — agile and special in many ways.

“Meetings are different with him. It explains why I have not attacked him for a long while. My bone is with Zanu PF for now.”

But an angry Chamisa said the alleged note was part of a dirty tricks campaign led by a Zanu PF minister and also an MP whom he both refused to name.

“I will reveal these people at the appropriate time. But this particular minister was behind the plot to assassinate me at the airport in 2008. What you are seeing is drama that’s about to begin. At the centre of it is also an MP who threatened that even if I die, he would make sure I am doubly dead,” Chamisa said.

“This is coming from elements within Zanu PF. They are determined to see me dead metaphorically and literally. But I’m not moved at all. How can I say that I admire people who have persecuted me?

“I have been arrested 16 times and nearly lost my life at the hands of these people. Ever since I got into government I’m the saddest minister – they have stripped me of my mandate of ICT, frustrated every initiative and planted obstacles all the way.”

Chamisa said the “dirty plot” had been put into action after the MDC-T won a key vote for Speaker of Parliament amid claims that Zanu PF had tried to bribe some of its MPs. Chamisa addressed a press conference waving wads of United States dollars which he said had been surrendered to the party leadership by MPs who turned down Zanu PF.
Zanu PF denied the alleged plot, and said it had nothing to do with the US$25,000 displayed at the MDC-T press conference.

“I have never been Zanu PF,” Chamisa went on, “God created me just as I am. They can paint me black but it doesn’t matter, I’m as white as a white dove.

“I’m allergic to Zanu PF. Every tissue in my body is allergic, including the hand that they claim wrote that note. I have consistently fought dictatorship in this country, and I will continue to fight tyranny. I will never ever worship the devil. I refuse now, I refuse tomorrow and will refuse forever.”

The claims, if true, would have been particularly damaging to Chamisa, especially the suggestion that he had softened attacks on Mugabe because of his personal admiration for the octogenarian leader.

Chamisa’s boss, Tsvangirai has himself come under fire after telling Britain’s Guardian newspaper last September that Mugabe was his hero.

"I suppose Robert Mugabe has been portrayed as a demon," he told the Guardian. "But there is also a positive contribution to our country that he has made ... I suppose there is the personality conflict between a hero and a villain, of which you have to make an assessment. History will have to judge him."

Labels: NELSON CHAMISA, ROBERT MUGABE

posted by MrK @ 5:08 PM