PRIME Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has angrily dismissed state-media reports putting him at the centre of a high profile marital dispute in Bulawayo where a local business-woman is trying to divorce her husband of 12 years.
Aquilina Pamberi, who runs a boutique in Bulawayo city centre, has dragged her husband, Jacob Mandeya -- the owner of a local haulage company -- to the courts seeking the annulment of their marriage.
She accuses Mandeya of subjecting her to emotional stress through verbal insults, physical assault and the withholding of income adding there has never been any peace in the relationship.
The case was heard in the Juvenile Court at the Tredgold Building in Bulawayo on Friday.
However, The Herald newspaper claimed that Pamberi wants to leave her husband in order to continue an affair she started with the Prime Minister after the pair met at a social gathering in the city last year.
Tsvangirai’s spokesperson said the claims were “unfounded and baseless” and accused The Herald of making “highly defamatory” allegations in a bid to “besmirch the person and office of the Prime Minister”.
“We had hoped that the public media would use the new political dispensation to embark on responsible journalism and to refrain from publishing perfidy and outright lies.
“It is not in the national interest to engage in needless journalistic persecution of popularly elected national leaders. Responsible journalists cannot sulk on behalf of unpopular politicians,” Tsvangirai’s spokesperson, Luke Tamborinyoka, said in a statement.
He added that the state media had developed a habit of “concocting stories” about Tsvangirai and his MDC-T party in a futile bid to “boost their waning sales figures” and enhance the fortunes of his political rivals.
“No amount of yellow journalism will distract the Prime Minister from his core business of bringing about real and positive change in the lives of the people of Zimbabwe,” Tamborinyoka said.
Still, sources close to the bickering pair insist that the Prime Minister is having an affair with Pamberi but was not aware that she was still married.
“Tsvangirai has actually indicated that he plans to marry her, possibly, after the next elections. However, he was not aware that she is still married.
“They met at the Nesbert Castle last November and Pamberi also attended the recent wedding of Tsvangirai’s daughter in Harare as well as that ceremony where he planted a tree in honour of his late wife Susan,” a source who claimed to be close to the pair told newzimbabwe.com but asked not to be named.
She claimed that Pamberi wanted journalists barred from the court hearing in Bulawayo on Friday because she did not want Tsvangirai to know that she was still married.
The magistrate who presided over the divorce hearing on Friday, Rosemary Dube, did prevent journalists from covering the event and even barred a police court orderly attached to courts from attending the hearing.
“Pamberi is in a hurry to end her marriage but can not just leave because she wants to go with her shair of the family fortune,” our source claimed.
Tsvangirai’s wife, Susan, was killed in a car crash along the Harare-Masvingo road in March 2009.