Mujuru pleads innocence

JOICE Mujuru yesterday said she was "a poor widow" and a "true Christian" who had "no capacity" to engineer President Mugabe's assassination.

The former Vice President, who was sacked yesterday after 10 years in the job, claimed that she would die in Zanu-PF.

Mujuru was sacked along with eight cabinet ministers as President Mugabe cracked the whip on a "treacherous cabal" that plotted to unconstitutionally remove him from office.

Mujuru was shown the door along with eight of her inner circle.

Mujuru, Didymus Mutasa and Nicholas Goche missed the party's Congress that ended over the weekend after President Mugabe lifted the lid on an extraordinary plot to kill him, allegedly spearheaded by Mujuru.

Last night, President Mugabe's former deputy told the Voice of America's Studio 7 that allegations of corruption levelled against her were the product of "dirty politics".

"I've no capacity of doing those things. There's no way, there's no way and nobody has ever even suggested to me that these things that you are trying to do VP are wrong," she said.

"Mind you, I've been in the capacity of a Vice President for the past 10 years and I've been acting most of the time His Excellency is away and I don't think there's any time any one of his security details might tell him that the Vice President when she was acting invited us to sit over a plot of that nature, no ways. Mind you, I'm a Christian, a true Christian; I don't believe in killing, I don't believe in hating, I don't believe in making somebody suffer. It's politicking, these are some of the things that were started towards congress."

Mujuru said she was not given a chance to defend herself, although she admitted meeting President Mugabe privately at least three times in recent months.

"We were, some of us, especially myself, was not given a chance to explain even to discuss some of these things, few times I've been talking about them, telling people that I've no capacity, I'm not in a position to organise anybody to do such harm to anyone," she protested.

"Mind you, I've been a patron of the African Christian Council Churches of Zimbabwe which has over 700 churches, these are African formed churches.

"I'm sure you're quite familiar with them, and for such a person to be a patron to such a humongous organisation, you forget about them and you go back and you start even practising witchcraft, you start even thinking about killing somebody, even to assassinate a sitting President of State, it's unheard of, it's uncalled for, for what purpose? I'm just me, a poor widow, I can't do that."