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Joice Mujuru addresses delegates at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences recently

Muney X. Zavare Correspondent
JOICE Mujuru, former leader of Zimbabwe People First, former Vice President of Zimbabwe and unelected leader of the newly born National People’s Party, has all but killed prospects of a grand coalition of opposition parties against Zanu-PF. In her excitement, addressing a gathering mainly of female students at an event dubbed “Women Leaders on the Global Stage: Lessons for Africa” hosted by the London School of Economics and Political Sciences, Mujuru declared she will be running for the Zimbabwe presidency in 2018.

Mujuru did not have a good start to her speech. She unwisely deviated from her prepared speech by criticising the title of the event, suggesting that it should have read, ‘‘Women Leaders on the Global Stage: Lessons from Africa not for Africa’’.

This did not go done well with her hosts and chair of the panel Tina Fahm who wore an explosively scowling face.

The former ZimPF leader hastily retreated to her prepared speech, which sounded more like a poorly written election manifesto, delivered to the wrong audience.

She was scanty, vague and embarrassing on detail. Her delivery was dreary, flawed and yawn-inducing.

She struggled to read her prepared speech, mispronouncing simple words and incoherent sentences, which left the academic audience puzzled at times. She wasn’t displaying any ownership of that prepared speech.

Perhaps seeking to upstage the other two female speakers, Fadumo Dayib from Somalia and Nemata Majeks-Walker of Sierra Leone 50/50 project who had spoken before, Mujuru went on to sing praises of unelected British Prime Minister Theresa May and an increasingly less popular Angela Merkel of Germany.

This attracted huge booing and uncomfortable whispers from the student audience in the Sheikh Zayed Theatre building.

The statement betrayed Joice Mujuru’s lack of understanding of international politics, ignorance of British politics and issues that more astute leaders have to stay clear of.

It was also clear she had not been briefed on the politics of her audience.

Mujuru also had a name faux pas as she kept calling and addressing Fadumo with a wrong name, embarrassingly referring to her as Madumo, or Madume throughout the evening. The few Zimbabweans in the audience were cringing throughout.

Mujuru proudly chronicled her history of participating in the liberation war and becoming the youngest ever Cabinet minister of President Mugabe’s Government in 1980.

She went on to outline how she had successfully worked her way up to the Vice Presidency of the country, a position she held until being sacked from Zanu-PF in December 2014.

However, when it was time for questions by the audience, Mujuru failed to accept any responsibility for all decisions that were made during her tenure in Government when questioned by a student about her corruption and incompetence.

Mujuru, who was later taken to task about her assertion that she left both Zanu-PF and ZimPF when evidence shows she was sacked by both, for being incompetent and dictatorial appeared, was rattled by questions about her political life in President Mugabe’s Government.

She could not justify why Zimbabweans should trust her with governance of the country when by her admission she was incapable of standing up for what she believes in.

She could not convince the audience about her interests in empowering women as her entourage constituted mainly middle aged men, a development that gave credence to her nickname of ‘Queen Bee’. And that she has a fear of other women as her former colleague in ZimPF Margaret Dongo has said.

Those Zimbabweans in attendance, if they learnt anything about Joice Runaida Mujuru during this event, it would be that she is self-serving, dishonest, plays fast and loose with the truth to achieve her goals and has no credible credentials to take the country forward.

This is an aspiring leader who is not inspiring. How the Bond Note became part of presentation on Women’s Day presentation was never explained.

Like others in the opposition, she chose a foreign stage to attack her country as she denigrated bond notes. So bizarre was her choice of words such as calling bond notes useless toilet tissue.

One student jokingly asked if she could give her a tonne of tissue paper in exchange to all the bond notes in her account and see who would be richer. Guess you know the answer to that!