Journalist Edmund Kudzai has refused to apologise to Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) spokesperson Fadzayi Mahere.
Mahere threatened Kudzai with legal action, demanding the retraction of his report which alleges that she is having an affair with Tinashe Murapata.
Kudzai vowed to defend his claims and continue his exposure of Mahere’s immoral conduct.
He claimed that Mahere asked for money from the married businessman, supposedly for a political campaign which never happened.
Please see Edmund Kudzayi ‘s full statement below:
_EDITOR’S BRIEF 06 JULY 2022:_ *Mahere seeks to bury love affair scandal by legal manoeuvres and time*
Yesterday, Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) spokesperson Fadzayi Mahere threatened this publication with legal action, demanding the retraction of our report which was well-sourced and clearly in the public interest. No retraction is coming. We stand by our story.
Mahere denies being party to the collapse of the marriage in question.
This requires us to believe that a married man left his happy wife and two small kids at home, travelled with a beautiful woman to Masvingo, and decided to spend the night, all to mourn Mbuya Chamisa. And the wife-at-home had no qualms with these peculiar arrangements? It’s an outrageous proposition that takes people for fools.
Curiously, she did not deny asking for money from the married businessman, supposedly for a political campaign. The devil is always in the details. What political campaign was she conducting in February 2021?
As a lawyer, Mahere fully understands both the power of the law and its potential to be abused. She was rebuked by a judge in the Metropolitan case against NSSA, for a “Humpty Dumpty” defence where she needlessly extended the length of legal proceedings. Mahere does not hesitate to contort legal processes and abuse the law to her advantage.
That devious intent to abuse the law was betrayed in her clumsy tweet yesterday when she said: “Even if it takes me a decade, I will always fight tirelessly to defend my good name … I will defend what is mine – my reputation,” Mahere wrote.
A Freudian slip perhaps.
It would certainly suit Mahere’s nefarious ends to spend ten years in legal gymnastics to obfuscate the facts, diminishing them to nothing more than an unresolved legal dispute as a form of attrition by litigation.
Her cynical intention is to exploit litigation, not as a righteous instrument of speedy justice, but a deceitful delaying tactic. It is inconceivable that a person eager to clear their name would contemplate 10 years of litigation. This publication reached out to Mahere and the businessman in question and asked for comment. None was given.
Instead, her imagination has gone into overdrive as she contemplates legal rigmaroles that she could employ to drag the affair over a decade.
This is shameful from one who claims to speak for an opposition committed to upholding the rule of law. Kukurigo’s report is in the public interest, was well-sourced and is consistent with the pattern of reports regarding Mahere’s relationships with married men.
Indeed, there has been widespread speculation over her relationship with a Zanu PF legislator. She has taken no legal action. Notoriously in 2018, she was accused of being a “njapisi” who “chased after married men like the riot police”. No legal action was taken.
There is also speculation over her relationship with the president of the CCC, over which she was reportedly publicly confronted by his wife at 40 Cork Road in Harare.
In other words, public speculation about Mahere’s affairs with married men has followed her as long as she has been in politics. Stung by our well-resourced report, she has targeted this publication in a clear abuse of litigation, in the futile hope of erasing what is now all too clear to see and impossible to ignore.
The opposition claims it wants a better Zimbabwe, presumably one based on integrity in public office and high ethical standards for public officials, both men and women. If Mahere was not a politician claiming to hold her opponents to a higher standard, nobody would care what she does privately. As a lawyer bound by professional ethics and as a politician claiming to stand for integrity in public life, she must be held to the same standard that she seeks to hold others.
The public was rightly outraged when former vice president Kembo Mohadi was caught in a sex scandal, involving married women. We expect politicians to uphold the same standards irrespective of their gender or political party. If we cannot hold the still-powerless opposition to the same standard, it will almost certainly not be enforced should they secure power to govern.
This publication will defend unflinchingly, fully and publicly, the frivolous and abusive litigation that Mahere has threatened. We will not be intimidated by easily-plucked horns of feathers. Instead, we will accelerate our exposure of her immoral conduct. We will not be cowed.
_Kukurigo Editorials©️_
