When does one let a little lie about Mugabe slip through?

I told them that if you fly to Zimbabwe, the food you eat is mostly likely to have been made by a Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front company, Catercraft.

When you arrived in Zimbabwe and you wanted to travel in style, you probably hired a car from a ZANU-PF company as ZIMOCO had the franchise for the most luxurious cars in the country- Mercedes Benz or Jeep.

When you got to your hotel, the food you ate was probably cooked on a stove made by a ZANU-PF company, Tregers.

Even in South Africa itself most people prided themselves in using stoves made by a ZANU-PF company, Kango, branded KIC in South Africa.

The blankets on your bed were from a ZANU-PF company, National Blankets.

The water you bathed or showered was heated by a geyser made by a ZANU-PF company.

And you probably went to change your money at a ZANU-PF bank……

The greatest gift Mugabe gave me, though, was to liberate me. He gave me pride to be a Zimbabwean. Pride to stand up for my rights. This, in my humble opinion, can never be undone, that is, if you have any principles.

I remember way back in 1983, only three years after independence, I was nominated one of the 12 international fellows for the World Press Institute, in St Paul. Minnesota, in the United States. I was the first Zimbabwean to be awarded the fellowship, thanks to my editor at the time, Tommy Sithole.

Tommy, as we all called him, had been in exile and knew about these opportunities. Farai Munyuki, who was editor of the Herald at the time, was a fellow of that institute before me, but he had gone there as a Zambian because he worked in Zambia prior to Zimbabwe’s independence.

There were 12 of us:

• Jing Xian-Fa from China
• Kim Weckstrom from Finland
• Wolfgang Aigner from Germany
• Gustavo Adolfo Berganza from Guatamala
• Sudip Mazumdar from India
• Amnon Abramovitz from Israel
• Balford Henry from Jamaica
• Katsuya Fukunaga from Japan
• Maud Motanyane from Switzerland
• Yvonne-Denise Kochli from Switzerland
• Milovan Jaukovic from Yugoslavia and I was last.

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