Mutsvangwa Attacks Tendi Over Criticism Of Mnangagwa Biography

Ambassador Christopher Mutsvangwa has launched a scathing attack on UK-based academic and biographer Blessing Miles Tendi over his criticism of the recently published biography of President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
 
The book, authored by former MDC secretary of policy, Eddie Cross, titled A life of Sacrifice was launched at State House Thursday and chronicles Mnangagwa’s life.
 
Tendi, via his Twitter account, criticised the book alleging it has several omissions and historical falsehoods. He said:

Of historical falsehoods and silences:

1. Mnangagwa was not a member of the Crocodile Gang.

2. Silence on the 1980’s Gukurahundi.

3. Silence on the DRC War.

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4. Silence on the death of Solomon Mujuru.

5. The 2017 military coup is referred to as a “military assisted transition”.

His remarks attracted criticism from Mutsvangwa, a former advisor to President Mnangagwa, who claimed Tendi himself made errors in the Solomon Mujuru biography – The Army and Politics in Zimbabwe: Mujuru, the Liberation Fighter and Kingmaker.

Mujuru, known by his nom-de-guerre Nhongo until 1992, when he retired from the army, was second in command of the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA).

According to Tendi, Mujuru played a key role in enabling Robert Mugabe to seize the leadership of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) in 1976. He eventually led Zimbabwe’s national army, became a businessman of some note, and continued to play significant roles in ZANU’s internal politics until his unexplained death in 2011.

Tendi chronologically tells Mujuru’s story from childhood, through his years in the liberation struggle and forward into independent Zimbabwe. He also claims Mujuru distrusted now president Emmerson Mnangagwa and opposed his rise within ZANU PF.

Mutsvangwa said:

Blessing Miles Tendi, you are free to write oceans of ink and forests of paper on selected topics of your choice on any historical event. What you cannot do is compel Eddie Cross to write about what he independently thinks.

You simply are just not his brain box. His grey matter is not your real estate. Neither is his writing hand your narcissist pen.

You wrote your rag book extolling an illiterate comrade as the epitome of guerrilla valour and prowess in the most glorious military endeavour of modern Africa’s anti-colonial, anti-racist warfare against the self-anointed Masters of the Universe of the West. In your specious tome, you blinded yourself to the modern African military genius that was General Magama Tongogara.

For reasons of pandering to compromised patronage, your eyes only opt to pick out specks on a big screen.

All said, you can never be a professional photographer to a wedding. Your camera lense will ogle about, registering gatecrashers and scruffy drunkards. Them rather than the folding ceremony and its enthroned bride and groom. Please do spare us your post-event can’t about the Chimurenga-Mvukelo. It will never serve as the substitute of the true historical experience that EDM painfully walked barefoot on smouldering embers.

Cross’ book reportedly sold over 50 000 copies on the day it was launched.

More: Pindula News; NewZimbabwe