PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe’s spokesperson George Charamba has claimed that he inherited the acerbic Nathaniel Manheru column from its “founder”, Higher Education minister Jonathan Moyo.
BY BLESSED MHLANGA
“It’s been many seasons since this column was launched, more accurately, ever since I adopted it from its tired founder, Professor Jonathan Moyo. While I know Nathaniel to be his middle name, I will not hazard a guess on why he surnamed in Manheru,” Charamba wrote in his parting shot for Manheru in The Saturday Herald.
Charamba, who recently admitted to being the faceless character behind the column, had of late used the platform to throw potshots at Zanu PF bigwigs and shed intimate details of the factional wars rocking the ruling party from a vantage point, gaining massive traction from readers keen on eavesdropping on trending political discourse within both government and the ruling party.
Following Charamba’s parting shot, Moyo took to his official Twitter account to celebrate the death of a column he birthed, but had come back to sting him hard as Zanu PF factional politics took centre stage.
“Goodbye Nathaniel Manheru, Godspeed and good riddance!” Moyo tweeted.
Ironically, Charamba, who disclosed recently that he was the character behind Manheru at the late musician Dickson Changaira, aka Cde Chinx’s funeral, retired his column a day after the burial of the liberation war music icon, but warned that he could soon resurrect in another shape.
“It must retire to the cemetery and join the dead, indeed to sleep hopefully eternally. Which is what I do with this instalment itself the last. So adieus Zimbabwe! Bearing in mind, of course, that what reawakens ghosts are angering acts by the lving. In those circumstances, the earth will reawaken, to the great grief for all living souls,” he wrote.
