Tsvangirai flees Chiwengwa's wife, journalist injured

'I want to take away your manhood," Chiwengwa's wife charged at Tsvangirai

TOP SOLDIER: Chiwenga

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By Lebo Nkatazo

THE short-fused wife of Zimbabwe’s top soldier launched a violent attack on a journalist and hurled insults at opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in a busy Harare supermarket on Wednesday.

Jocelyn Chiwenga, the wife of General Constantine Chiwenga, the Commander of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, launched into the attack after Tsvangirai, accompanied by several officials of his Movement for Democratic Change party, visited the supermarket to witness the effects of a government-ordered price freeze.

The MDC leader, having visited several other shops in Harare’s Central Business District and high density suburbs, arrived at Makro Wholesalers in Hillside but clearly had not prepared for a stormy confrontation with Chiwenga.

Jocelyn Chiwenga, flanked by bodyguards -- all believed to be soldiers -- started hurling insults at Tsvangirai and his officials and ordered management to lock them up in the shop.

“I want to take away your manhood today,” Chiwenga shouted at Tsvangirai, who leads a faction of the country’s main opposition party.

A manager at the shop heeded Chiwenga’s call, and ordered a guard from a security firm, Mine Tech, to cage the opposition officials. Mine Tech is owned by retired Zimbabwe National Army Colonel Lionel Dyke.

Chiwenga proceeded to slap freelance photographer Tsvangirai Mukwazhi.

Two other journalists -- Kumbirai Mafunda who is the Financial Gazette’s acting political editor and a reporter from Zambia’s Post newspaper sustained minor injuries in the stampede to escape from the shop.

Tsvangirai was helped out of the shop by his bodyguards before the doors could lock.

Jocelyn Chiwenga is notorious for public violence.

In April 2002 she reportedly showed up at a farm outside Harare with an armed gang and ordered the farm’s white owner to turn over his property to her or be killed, according to documents filed in a Zimbabwean court.

She reportedly warned the farmer: “I have not tasted white blood for 20 years.”

One year later, Chiwenga accosted Gugulethyu Moyo, a lawyer for pro-opposition Daily News newspaper, and beat her so severely that she had to seek medical attention.

“Your paper wants to encourage anarchy in this country,” Chiwenga yelled at the lawyer.

The Zimbabwe government ordered shops to reduce prices by half and imposed price caps on all commodities, accusing business owners of profiteering in a bid to fuel public anger against the government.

President Robert Mugabe’s government accuses businesses of colluding with opposition parties and Western nations to drive up prices and disrupt the economy in order to influence “regime change”.

Tsvangirai this week dismissed the price freeze as a political gimmick that will be short-lived.

He said the government move was an “ill-advised populist policy”.

Zimbabweans vote in general elections next year. Tsvangirai’s party is riven by internal divisions and observers give him slim chances of ending the 28-year rule of Mugabe’s Zanu PF party.

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