“IF I REVEAL ALL YOU WILL LOSE YOUR JOB” – MUBAIWA ACCUSES CHIWENGA OF DRUG ABUSE
HARARE – Freed attempted murder accused Marry Mubaiwa has accused Vice President Constantino Chiwenga of long-term abuse of prescription drugs and blocking her from their children, warning that if she reveals everything he will lose his job.
In the most explosive allegations, Mubaiwa claimed Chiwenga was addicted to pethidine and forced nurses to inject her too.
Pethidine is a strong, synthetic opioid pain reliever and narcotic analgesic and is highly addictive.
“What Chiwenga did to me, he destroyed my mental health. He destroyed my health. And this is a man who I looked after, doing drugs – illegally. He used to inject himself with pethidine. For so many years the nurses and even doctors knew that we were being injected with pethidine,” she alleged.
“The nurses were not called in, we stayed with them at home because Chiwenga would call them anytime to inject us. The nurses would not question because when you’re in the army when the boss tell you to do something, you do it without questioning.”
“When he appears on TV saying youths should abstain from drugs I always wonder… Even when he fell ill, I think it was because of too much pethidine. He had become addicted. He wanted it everyday. He would sometimes buy it from the black market.”
She said injections for her only stopped during her three back-to-back pregnancies and claimed Chiwenga still paid her $195,000 medical bill out of guilt.
Mubaiwa insisted she was not poor when they met.
“When I first met him I was standing besides my gold BMW with my uncle George Chiweshe, who was the judge president then. My uncle introduced me to Chiwenga as the general. Back then I did not know what a general was. The general that I knew was a general manager. We later became friends and he asked me if I could marry him.”
“Mubaiwa said Chiwenga obtained custody of their three children – Tendai, Christian and Michael – at the Supreme Court while she was in prison and cut all contact.”
He is the one who blocked me from seeing the children. He made sure I don’t see them or talk to them,” she said.
She claimed cars tried to ram her vehicle on many occasions and she suspected it was people hired by Chiwenga.
She added that guards who had protected her when things were rosy were tortured in Bulawayo detention barracks when things went sour.
“This is abuse of power. Even President Mnangagwa knows that I did not try to kill that man.
“She described him as easily manipulated: Chiwenga is not a man enough. He can only do something when someone influences him.”
In a direct appeal to Chiwenga, she said:”Constantino, I have a lot that I can say about you and if I reveal all, you will lose your job, just today. I have been asking for years to see my children but you became Judas. I hope that God forgives you.”
“Constantino with a bible in hand, do the right thing… I want you Chiwenga to take your glass of whisky and put two black of ice like you used to and think hard about this. You owe me an apology. How can your craving for a prostitute make you accuse me of such a serious crime?”
“He should have simply said it’s over, give me my children, then we split the property which I had already had when we met but he took everything, what was he punishing me, what wrong had I done,” she said.
“What kind of man does not accept that it’s over, if a woman says I don’t love you anymore why would you have to use force… Then you hear that he’s the man who wants to be president. What kind of president is he going to be when does so unjustly things?”
Mubaiwa said she was arrested in December 2019 while showering in their Borrowdale home.
“Men walked in while I was taking a shower. Can you imagine how humiliating that is? I even said to them who are you and all they said to me was hurry up and get dressed,” she said.
“I said to them, do you know who this house belongs to because I was very sure that anybody who knew that they were in the vice president’s house, or bedroom wouldn’t be standing there… I didn’t realize that it was him that had sent them.”
She said two men and two women took her to Avondale Police Station where lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa told her she was charged with attempted murder.
“At first I laughed thinking it was a joke… Attempted murder? That is a serious charge. Why did he not have me arrested in South Africa? Obviously, he knew that it was all a lie.”
Mubaiwa claimed she drove Chiwenga to the airport when he was flown to China for treatment and President Emmerson Mnangagwa called her.
“President Mnangagwa called me and said I have decided that Chiwenga must go and get to treatment but you’re not going. I asked why but he said Manini he will be staying in a military hospital so you can’t go. I’ll send a plane to go and take you,” she claimed.
She said Mnangagwa promised a plane for her, her children and mother, and did send one for a domestic trip, but her China trip never came.
After three months, she said, an anonymous caller from the President’s office warned her “you are not going anywhere.”
Without mentioning names, Mubaiwa said she knew who had influenced Chiwenga to accuse her of the murder plot. “You know who,” she said, in apparent reference to Colonel Miniyothabo (Minnie) Baloyi
Mnangagwa, in an inadvertent slip revealed the couple had a long-standing relationship while Chiwenga while he was still married to Marry Mubaiwa at Chiwenga’s wedding to Baloyi on 23 December 2023 at St Gerard’s Catholic Church in Borrowdale, Harare.
Chiwenga and Mubaiwa were married from roughly 2011 to 2019, with the formal divorce process completing later.
Chiwenga has not responded to these allegations.