PRIME Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s spokesman, James Maridadi, is battling to protect the Premier’s image at a crucial time after unsavoury stories linking him to a woman did a round on online publications on Tuesday, right in the middle of his tour of the United States and Europe.
Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Dr Arikana Chiyedzo Chihombori walk the red carpet at the Jacob Zuma inauguration in Pretoria on May 9.
It is being alleged that Tsvangirai and Maridadi misled the nation over the identity of the mysterious woman who walked by the recently widowed Prime Minister’s side as he arrived to attend the inauguration of President Jacob Zuma of South Africa in Pretoria on Saturday, May 9.
Maridadi, speaking immediately after the Zuma inauguration, identified Tsvangirai’s bespectacled companion as the Prime Minister’s niece. The woman has since been identified as Dr Arikana Chiyedzo Chihombori, a Zimbabwean medical doctor based in the United States.
But doubt was cast over the truthfulness of Maridadi’s assertion when a Commercial Farmers’ Union (CFU) spokesman claimed the Prime Minister had denied the relationship in a conversation with United States Ambassador to Zimbabwe, James McGee. It was not clear why it became necessary for Tsvangirai to make the denial to the Ambassador or how the CFU, which represents Zimbabwe’s white commercial farmers, became instantly privy to such a privileged denial.
The renewed controversy over the woman erupted after a commercial farmer in Chegutu claimed Chihombori had tried to seize his farm. The farmer, named by the ZWNews.com website as one L. J. Cremer, claims Chihombori had been “actively trying to seize De Rus Farm since late last year”.
John Worsely Worswick, a spokesman for Justice for Agriculture (JAG), a group which campaigns on behalf of Zimbabwe’s embattled commercial farmers, told SW Radio Africa Monday night that the farmer had approached the American embassy after De Rus Farm had been visited by an individual “with an American accent looking to take over their property”.
Worswick said: “The feedback that came to the Cremers (from the US embassy) was to the effect that this was the same woman who attended the inauguration with Tsvangirai, and that the ambassador had taken Tsvangirai to task about who this woman was, and that he had denied any knowledge of her. Now that is very alarming.”
With the raging controversy threatening to distract the Prime Minister at a time when he requires to focus all his attention on the task in hand, The Herald reported Tuesday that Tsvangirai had embarked on the tour abroad on the specific instructions of Mugabe to press for the removal of sanctions and the restoration of the country’s lines of credit.
“Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is set to clash with US President Barack Obama when they meet on Friday as Washington has already announced that it will dig in on sanctions while the Prime Minister has a brief from President Mugabe and Cabinet to press for the lifting of the sanctions,” the paper reported in a front page article.
But Western nations insist they want to see more reforms in Harare, especially media reforms and a cessation of disruptive farm invasions. Tsvangirai recently characterized the latest wave of invasions as being “blown out of proportion”.
Maridadi was reported as saying that, in a bid to contain the developing crisis Tsvangirai had on Tuesday instructed Chihombori to “walk away from that farm”.
NewZImbabwe.com reported that Chihombori was expected to issue a press statement on Tuesday under pressure from the Prime Minister’s office. There was no evidence late Tuesday night that the statement had been issued. Maridadi was constantly unreachable on his number in Washington, where Tsvangirai is preparing to meet Obama on Friday.
“Dr Chihombori is the Prime Minister’s niece, that’s the truth,” Maridadi was reported to have said earlier in the day.
Chihombori’s appearance in Pretoria on May 9 alongside Tsvangirai was the cause of speculation on the internet, prompting the Prime Minister’s office to issue a statement.
“Dr Chihombori was invited separately to the Zuma inauguration, but she arrived at the same time as the Prime Minister,” Maridadi said at the time.
The matter would have died on the note had the Chegutu commercial farmer not approached the US embassy to make inquiries about the woman from America who wanted to take De Rus Farm over.
Somehow, it occurred to someone at the embassy that this was the same woman who had arrived at the Zuma inauguration in the company of Tsvangirai.
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