Eccentric UK based Zimbabwean journalist, Simba Chikanza, has explained his fight with popular award winning Zimbabwean journalist, Hopewell Chin’ono.
Writing on Facebook, Chikanza said:
BIG APOLOGY TO THE MASSES | Over the last several weeks, we are getting extremely overwhelmed by requests for publishing service by poor vulnerable people who’ve been made to believe by Mr Hopewell Chin’ono that scores of his colleagues, local journalists, are bribed. A critical case is that in which Mr Chin’ono has directly and falsely accused Newsday Editor, Wisdom Mudzungairi of confessing to bribes, something that never happened and the latter has been waiting to connect to the accuser since the 29th July 2022, when Mudzungairi ended up staying up to midnight over the phone waiting to get to reach Chin’ono in a 3 way, as the latter continued to claim that Mudzungairi truly made these confessions. Chin’ono had at the time also accused me personally of getting paid by the world’s worst criminal, whose presidency he, Chin’ono has worked for, to promote 2017-2020, Emmerson Mnangagwa (up to the day of the late Gen Perrance Shiri’s death.) The only thing Chin’ono has done is to beep back with no genuine commitment to confront the man he accuses of the treachery. I attempted several efforts to get Chin’ono to settle his matter on Sunday night, in Leicester and in the audio it is all too clear he has nothing but evasive generalisations and no desire to connect with Mudzungairi. I gave him up to Monday evening and still nothing had been done upon which time his frustrations led to one direction, as I have an obligation to explain why our service has been slow over the last few weeks.
This is not the first time Mr Chin’ono has behaved in this way. On the 15th May 2022, he called me several times and coerced me to delete my tweet to Mnangagwa’s wife, Auxillia in which I demanded that she completes her interview over her armed robber deployments that threaten scores of people.
Through Chin’ono’s coercion, a crucial story of national importance was shifted to smear me, as an aggressor and the armed robber deployer, Auxilliah Mnangagwa, the victim. God knows how many people are right now being raided by these armed robbers who are no longer the focus of the story, thanks to Mr Chin’ono! What was the gain in all this, to blow out my candle? I am still struggling to figure out.
I have a lot to say and I will pour out so that people can understand what is happening. But I have given this man more than a month to level up to Mudzungairi, something that I felt was so simple that he could have easily fixed by a simple apology or even a one line narration to quieten the inquiry.
I have no intention to embarass him, but he clearly has a case to answer.
Last week, Chin’ono demanded that journalists do rolling reporting over the Justice Wadyajena court case while suggesting that if they don’t do this minute by minute activity, they have been bribed. He even said there are 2 editors who will report on the bribes. To this date there is nothing like that, and after seeing the legend Mapfumo for photos on Monday morning, I asked him to do the simple thing and in front of former MP Tafadzwa Musekiwa and other people, he was totally evasive. Everyone knows that it is impossible and even criminal to do rolling reporting in Zimbabwean courts. You will be charged if found using your phone, the only exception being where the entire judicial system has passed express permission for a specific case.
Mr Chin’ono is smearing and demanding that journos do something that he has never at any time called for over the Fadzayi Mahere case in which his close friend is making fraudulent claims against and harassing another female citizen while abusing the courts on a case whose frauds he himself investigated. In such circumstances you would expect Chin’ono who prides self as an anti corruption journalist, to do the moral thing. I know all this because he himself used to call me and spend hours exposing his close female friend.
I am shocked that he rather choses to scandalise his own colleagues who are serving the nation’s struggling poor people.
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Simba Chikanza
