People First leader Joice Mujuru has responded to persistent accusations against her family for allegedly looting Chiadzwa diamonds.
Last week ZANU PF Commissar, Saviour Kasukuwere charged that her hands are dirty as regards diamond looting. She has since replied to the accusations relegating them to mere “jokes and jests” printed using her name. Below was Mujuru’s response to the Standard newspaper in a wide ranging interview:
EM: Jonathan Moyo recently said you are corrupt and you are not yet off the hook. Minister Saviour Kasukuwere said the same and a lot of people said you were responsible for the plunder of diamonds in Chiadzwa.  What is your defence to that and can you shed light on how the name “churu chamai Mujuru” [Mrs Mujuru’s antihill] came into being in Chiadzwa.
JTM: I thought he was the same Moyo who talked about all this being political banter. As for churu chamai Mujuru, there was a Cabinet taskforce that had VaMutasa, VaSekeramayi [Sydney Sekeramayi], Mai [Oppah] Muchinguri-Kashiri, VaMushohwe [Chris Mushohwe] and the late [Amos] VaMidzi who investigated that.
They found out that the people of Chiadzwa who are next to Cashel Valley where I was instrumental in setting up a horticulture project were bragging to their Cashel Valley counterparts that now they had their own source of foreign currency when diamonds were found in their area.
The Cashel Valley farmers were exporting their horticulture to London and were getting foreign currency at a time when other Zimbabweans were getting foreign currency through “burning”.
They were getting back at their neighbours, in a jocular way, because for many years the Cashel Valley horticulture farmers bragged about what Mai Mujuru had done for them and when the Chiadzwa villagers discovered diamonds, they too hit back and nicknamed a field “churu chaMai Mujuru”. I have also heard that there were Zupco buses nicknamed ‘zvimai Mujuru’, does it mean I own the buses? That’s what happens when people fall in love with you as a person; you become a subject of their jests. It is normal and I take no offence.
But if there is anyone who insists that I committed any crime, could there be any better time than now to prosecute Mai Mujuru? Let those that have evidence sustainable in a court of law come forward and prove it before all and sundry.-