Challenge to Mugabe to come out clean on alleged coup nonsense

Press Statement

Challenge to Mugabe to come out clean on alleged coup nonsense

It has become very necessary that MDC-99 puts the record straight on an issue that has been kept on the shelves by the Zanu-PF dictatorship for a long time, in which an attempt is made to implicate myself in an alleged involvement in a failed coup plan.

A story came out in a Zanu-PF aligned newspaper called The Patriot last week based on the old, tried and failed allegation that i was involved in a failed plan to arrange a coup that would have culminated into Robert Mugabe being deposed and replaced by Morgan Tsvangirai through the aid of Nigerian army Personnel.

The publication of this story came as no surprise to me and my party because it comes on the heels of signs of plans by suspected Zanu-PF activists within the state security systems intended to expose my person to physical and political harm.

Anyone who has followed Zimbabwe's politics would agree with us about the real danger one faces through being considered as either a coup plotter or a treason schemer. It is also a matter of public record that we have lost count of the occasions Mugabe's  political opponents were either arrested or harassed on the grounds of mostly fictitious allegations of the nature some still lay against me.

It is alleged in the report that I was working with a $15 million budget to bribe senior and middle level army persons in the Zimbabwe defence forces to prosecute the plot. It is further alleged that I approached the Air Marshall Perence Shiri to bribe him into becoming an accomplice on the fictitious and alleged plot.

Let me set the record straight;
At no time was I involved in the alleged coup plot, and am sure if I did as is being presented, with claims that Shiri recorded our conversations during the three meetings we held at his home, I would have either become history or been rotting in prison given Mugabe's penchant for nailing those that he suspects to have attempted to commit treason.

I have even in the past confirmed having met with Shiri in my capacity as the then secretary for security in the MDC, but specifically for the purposes Shiri himself confirmed in court during the treason trial of Tsvangirai. Shiri made it clear that we had approached him to negotiate for a workable and harmonious relationship between our party and security service chiefs, which I am sure contributed to Tsvangirai being acquitted. It therefore becomes nonsensical for anyone to still go back and write baseless allegations about the fictitious coup saga.

I have no doubt that the retrieving of this nonsensical false story by anyone in another way also puts Shiri himself to be unnecessarily associated with bad publicity when he long ago set the record straight and cleared us of the fictitious coup allegations.

The amount of money we are alleged to have received from the British to prosecute the coup is so astonishing that as a political player I would only need a tenth of the said amount to give Mugabe's regime sleepless nights. The regime should be told in no uncertain terms, that they could not have survived a day longer if such kind of resources were availed to me and  I would do it without shedding any blood.

However, I want to challenge Mugabe to either stop the habit of wantonly throwing serious allegations on law-abiding citizens such as myself and the rest of MDC99 leadership or have his system prove the stupid allegations. We are faced with serious responsibilities of delivering real political change to the masses of Zimbabwe and would not accept having our time wasted by the tried and failed dirty tactics of the dictatorship.

Thank you

Job Sikhala
MDC-99 President