Is Jonathan Moyo the original Herald’s Manheru?

Jonathan Moyo and George Charamba once worked together with Moyo as the Minister and Charamba as the Secretary for the Ministry but Charamba had been with the ministry longer and was spokesman for the President starting with Canaan Banana.

But it appeared they got on well together until Charamba waded into Jonathan Moyo, through his column Manheru.

“Minister Jonathan Nathaniel Moyo, the Professor: leave those scurrilous and thoughtless 140-letter tweets, all to motivate and orchestrate real research, to build and organise real knowledge, without doubt always your forte, your competence! Not this dabbling in Zanu-PF succession politics you know you will not win,” Charamba wrote in last Saturday’s column.

The column is written by Nathaniel Manheru but Moyo said the author is in fact Charamba.

The column went on: “Chine vene vacho chinhu ichi and you won’t be there when great questions of the day are settled mumatare avo! Too young, too small, simply a late arrivant, my good soul-mate! You, me, all others like us, must do what we know and do best: quietly remake our worlds by remarking the knowledge that animates and moves them.

“Not this shallow debate about a “mug” and a “boss”! As if President Mugabe ever drinks from a mug, let alone called or known by the awkward appellation of “Boss”. Not even fragile, hypersensitive at all to be bothered by such stuff! Not the man I know. Rather than seeking to remake him through our small thoughts and inane sensitivities, let us remake and deal with great issues he has assigned us: organising higher knowledge, in your case.”

Moyo responded via twitter:  “George Charamba & your cabal: Zimbabwe is not a chinhu, it's a nation that belongs to ALL Zimbabweans & not a cabal!”

It must have been painful for Moyo to see a column that he started being used to attack him.

Moyo was publicly outed by United States embassy as the author of the column in a Wikileaks cable dispatched in November 2003.

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