HARARE – President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s spokesman George Charamba deleted his Twitter account late Tuesday after inadvertently posting a link to a pornographic website.
Possession and sharing of pornography is prohibited by Zimbabwean law.
Charamba was using @jamwanda2 as his Twitter handle, confirmed last week when he posted pictures of Mnangagwa eating during a flight from France.
The president’s spokesman shocked his followers when a link to a pornographic video popped up in a tweet, with the title: ‘Mouth Watering MILF Orgasms.’
The link was accompanied by a video of a naked white woman touching her privates.
The tweet went up at 11PM, and perhaps realising what he had just done, Charamba – rather incomprehensibly – tweeted three minutes later: “Whoever does this is despicable, and I suggest it stops immediately. I am disgusted.”
Charamba then deleted the original tweet with the pornographic link as Zimbabweans gleefully seized on his moment of lascivious indiscretion to poke fun at him.
At 11.22PM, Charamba returned with another tweet: “Zvaiwana ngwarati!! Of course my good friends will enjoy this intrusion and milk it to the last ounce!! Meanwhile, Aluta Continua!!!”
Zimbabweans advised him to stop digging.
“The more you tweet about it, the more you are exposing yourself! Just delete and leave it! What you do to yourself in the privacy of your home in the midnight hour is not our business! Just be careful,” advised one.
Within moments, Charamba appeared to have decided that the only way out was to delete the account entirely – perhaps aware of the legal implications of being found to have “distributed” porn.
Possession of pornography is illegal in Zimbabwe, and its distribution is an aggravating factor which can land one in prison for up to two years.
The scandal, now dubbed #MILFgate, could not have come at a worse time for Charamba, who is reportedly out of favour with Mnangagwa.
The Zanu PF leader is reported to have told allies that Charamba – who is seen as a loyalist of Vice President Constantino Chiwenga – would be jettisoned soon, with a journalist-turned-lawyer earmarked to take over.
Charamba was a long-time spokesman of former president Robert Mugabe, but defected to support a military putsch which ousted him in November 2017.
Charamba’s wife, Idaishe Olivia Charamba, died aged 45 in May 2017, reportedly after battling liver and kidney complications.
