The sexual assault case against Chiefs Council president Chief Fortune Charumbira has taken a new twist with claims that a deep-seated family feud and a protracted chieftainship wrangle could be behind the whole saga.
The matter in which Charumbira, who is also the president
of the Pan African Parliament (PAP), is
accused of indecently assaulting a married woman who is said to be his niece,
is yet to go before the courts but has been reported to the police in Masvingo.
A group of family members and relatives of the embattled
chief has come together in his defence citing family history, the chief’s
relation to the alleged victim and various ‘inconsistencies’ in the
allegations.
They have penned a document which they say would be filed
with the police.
In the document that has been leaked to StandardPeople, the
family says they had investigated events surrounding the incident that resulted
in charges being laid against Charumbira.
They said indications were that this was “a calculated
political attack meant to destroy his career as president of the Chief’s
Council and also an onslaught to force
him to relinquish his post at the continental legislative body.”
The family also raised issues with the relationship between
the chief and his alleged victim who is said to be his brother’s daughter.
“Charumbira’s accuser is a distant fifth generation
questionable niece and there are murky family roots between the pair,” the
document reads.
“The relationship between the pair cannot be traced to the
great Charumbira progenitors, Mudavanhu and Chainda who are widely known to be
the great ancestors of the Sipambi clan with Chief Charumbira being the two
progenitors' direct descendant.”
The document makes allegations to the effect that the
victim’s family is working with a prominent South African businesswoman and a
former MP in Botswana (name withheld) to topple Charumbira from his post at PAP
using the alleged sexual assault case.
The businesswoman is said to have engaged a South
Africa-based gender violence lobby group, Kwanele Foundation to stage a
demonstration denouncing Charumbira at the PAP headquarters in Midrand, South
Africa last month but it flopped.
“They wanted to replace Charumbira with one of the four PAP
vice presidents, (name supplied), who is also a close ally of the SA
businesswoman,” the document added.
“We have information that the victim’s family has created a
WhatsApp group titled ‘'Sky Media 206’' and has also created a fake twitter
account to coordinate the hysteric attacks against Charumbira.”
The document further alleges that before the reported
sexual assault incident in March, there had been another sting operation in
February.
It involved an unnamed woman in Masvingo who had been
approached by Charumbira’s rivals to make sexual advances to him and to take
his nude pictures in return for a house and a car.
“It has emerged that these are the same people who, after
failing in their initial attempt, engineered this recent sexual assault case.
“Her (the victim's)
father was at one time a campaign manager of one of Charumbira's known
political nemesis in Masvingo West and that does not escape us as a possible
motive to destroy the chief,” the document reads.
“The father is also involved in the chieftainship wrangles
pitting Charumbira and his foes that are out to dethrone him.
“The victim’s mother (name withheld), a school headmistress also in Masvingo
Province, has been very inactive in the case, a situation that raises
eyebrows.”
The family said they were aware that the plot to destroy
Charumbira continued to thicken with reports that the victim was being pushed
to petition the Chiefs Council in a fresh bid to jettison the council president
from office.. Standard
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