Jack Zaba

Please forward the following to George Charamba whose contacts I don’t have but has been writing nonsense about me for years. My politics go back to the ‘60’s when I lived in Highfields and then onto University College of Rhodesia where I was a student leader, detained together with the likes of Godfrey Chidyausiku, was SRC president in 1972, expelled together with the likes of Witness Mangwende and Simba Makoni in 1973, detained thereafter and arrived in Lusaka In June 1975, soon after Chitepo’s assassination. To state the least, I was stationed at the Liberation Centre in Lusaka, together with John Mawema and Simbarashe Mumbegwegwi, on my way to Maputo on 1978. I came back from Maputo in February 1980, stayed my first night with Mnangagwa in Salisbury before joining the Election Directorate at 88 Manica Rd. I flatly turned down the suggestion by Shamuyarira that I stand and represent “Coloureds” in Arcadia and, if Charamba has read my book Race, Colour and Class, he will understand why it’s absolutely dishonest of him to claim that I relished representing “Coloureds”. It’s really stupid of him. For his information, I had a closer relationship with Robert Mugabe - and many of the nationalists, including Tekere of course- than he can claim, right from Maputo days to the very end. I was offered Cabinet posts on two occasions: in 1984, when Fay Chung and Oppa were offered and accepted; and in 2000, after the Constitutional Commission and subsequent elections. I turned down both. Charamba suffers from expedient amnesia, enough to forget the number of times he visited me at SAPES Trust, to assist with speech writing for the old man during the 1990’s; nor is he aware that I was offered but declined the offer of High Commissioner to UK in 1992. That alone makes nonsense of his claim that the old man had ditched me for the post of Secretary to Cabinet. I am the one that recruited Charles Utete to the Public Service, as I did many others who were my seniors by age, but I have always regarded Utete as the consummate Secretary to President and Cabinet that he was. I was retired from Government in July 1990 at the age of 42, in circumstances Charamba does not know except speculate. I detest profoundly Charamba’s penchant for attacking me as he does from time to time in the pages of Zimpspers, even if that p obsession is a reflection of the extent to which I might be the mirror through which he might introspect. @ibbosnr