HARARE – Zanu PF secretary for administration Obert Mpofu is suing the deputy secretary of the party’s youth wing for US$10 million, claiming defamation.
In summons filed at the Harare High Court on Tuesday, Mpofu references comments made by Lewis Matutu during a news conference at the Zanu PF HQ in June, naming Mpofu on a list of allegedly corrupt party officials, government officers and private individuals.
“The statement, in its defamatory, false and misleading allegations states that the plaintiff has violated the very foundation of the fight for democracy in Zimbabwe because of his corrupt proclivities,” Mpofu’s lawyers say.
Matutu allegedly said Mpofu’s corrupt inclinations continue to undermine socio economic transformation in Zimbabwe and, as a corollary, the youths are suffering immensely.
“He said that despite the country’s ample human and natural resources, corrupt individuals like the plaintiff continue to perpetuate alarming socio- economic imbalances in Zimbabwe,” said the lawyers.
Mpofu wants Matutu to make a public statement withdrawing his allegations.
Matutu is already being sued by businessman Frank Buyanga for allegedly linking him to land corruption and faces other threats of lawsuits from some of the individuals he publicly named.
Mpofu, for years linked to diamond corruption during his stint as mines minister, which he denies, says Matutu’s claims were “false, malicious, scandalous, wrongful and defamatory in the extreme, in that on their plain and ordinary meaning, they allege corruption by the plaintiff and were intended by the defendant and understood by his audience and all the readers of the statement to mean that plaintiff is a corrupt politician.”
“In addition to the plain and defamatory per se content of the statement as set out above, the defamatory allegations carry with them the secondary meaning, innuendo and sting that the plaintiff is not a law abiding citizen and therefore unfit to hold public and or political office,” Mpofu’s lawyers added.
The 67-year-old says he has a reputation to protect as a “businessman, practicing politician and current secretary for administration of Zanu PF” which has been “significantly impaired in the eyes of the public.”
Former tourism minister Prisca Mupfumira, included on Matutu’s corrupt list, was arrested within a month by the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission.
