Paul Nyathi|Latest media reports indicate that MDC Vice President Professor Welshman Ncube, has yet again disowned nude protestor Gugulethu Ncube who claims to be his daughter.
Professor Ncube told online media sources on Wednesday that Gugu was not his child, as she had convinced herself.
“I don’t know this woman. I read somewhere she was born in 1981. I was in high school at Mzilikazi in 1980 when she was conceived and very much in love with a girl I thought I would go on and marry. Her mother is not known to me, there’s just no conceivable possibility she could be my daughter,” Ncube said.
A friend who grew up with Gugu in Gwanda, Matabeleland South, is reported to have said Gugu has a serious mental problem.
“She’s psychotic, she’s delusional and it’s just unfortunate a lot of people will fall victim to her before she gets the help she needs.”
Sources close to Gugu have previously indicated that she had a difficult childhood after her father, a police officer called Lot Ncube from Gokwe in the Midlands, shot and killed her mother, Gladys Dube, before turning the gun on himself sometime in 1986 when she was just five.
“She was raised by her grandmother in rural Gwanda, and moved to the town where she stayed with her aunt while going through her secondary education. Her aunt lived at a police station there because the uncle is a police officer. The aunt now lives in Masvingo, after they were transferred,” the sources said.
“We have to assume that because of that double tragedy early in her childhood, she has these demons following her. Now she does not recognise the uncle in whose house she grew up, she insists he’s not her relative. She has another aunt living in South Africa and a brother, they have given up on her; they’ve no interest in helping her.”
In 2016, having moved to South Africa, Gugu accused two men of sexual assault – one Pastor Acts Aota and a Sinqobile Koboto. Police looked into the allegations and decided not to pursue the cases.
Then, in 2017, Gugu was again in the limelight after accusing an Ivorian man named Marc Gbaffou of raping her. She claimed she was dating Gbaffou, then chairman of the African Diaspora Forum, but she had refused to have sex with him until he divorced his wife. In a hotel room at the end of February, she claimed she got drunk with wine and Gbaffou had sex with her after she passed out – which she only discovered when she woke up the following day. Gbaffou allegedly apologised, and she let it slide.
Then, on April 4 the same year, she claimed Gbaffou raped her a second time at a hotel in Parktown, Johannesburg, after spiking her glass of wine. She called police who did not turn up, she later claimed.
On April 7, she said she was back at the hotel with Gbaffou who gave her wine, and then raped her a third time. She reported Gbaffou for rape on April 8, but the matter was not pursued by the courts. According to Hillbrow Police Station, prosecutors declined a prosecution due to lack of evidence.
Fast forward 2018, and Gugu would accuse Mhlava Edward Shibambu, her boss at Ucece and subject of her nude protest on Wednesday, of “asking for sexual favours in exchange for my job”. Police say they have found no prosecutable case, and Ucece say they reviewed the allegations after Shibambu was suspended but no wrongdoing was found.
Gugu was charged with public indecency following her arrest on Wednesday.