Joyce Mujuru
Encyclopedia
Joice Mujuru is a Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located in the southern part of the African continent, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia and a tip of Namibia to the northwest and Mozambique to the east. Zimbabwe has three...

an politician serving as Vice President of Zimbabwe. She has held this post since December 2004, and is also Vice President of ZANU-PF. She was married to Solomon Mujuru
Solomon Mujuru
Solomon Mujuru, also known as Rex Nhongo was a Zimbabwean military officer and politician who led Robert Mugabe's guerrilla forces during the Rhodesian Bush War. He was from the Zezuru clan. In post-independence Zimbabwe, he went on to become army chief before leaving government service in 1995...

 until his death in 2011, and is considered a potential successor to President Robert Mugabe
Robert Mugabe
Robert Gabriel Mugabe is the President of Zimbabwe. As one of the leaders of the liberation movement against white-minority rule, he was elected into power in 1980...

 for party leadership.

Early life

Mujuru was born in Zimbabwe's northeastern district of Mt. Darwin
Mount Darwin, Zimbabwe
Mount Darwin or Karanda is a town in Mashonaland Central province in Zimbabwe. It is named after the biologist Charles Darwin. It is located 156 kilometres north of Harare.- History :...

, a Shona
Shona people
Shona is the name collectively given to two groups of people in the east and southwest of Zimbabwe, north eastern Botswana and southern Mozambique.-Shona Regional Classification:...

 from the Korekore language group . As a Shona (a conglomeration of various tribes with a common sounding Bantu language) she is of the same language group as late co-Vice President Joseph Msika and President Robert Mugabe as well as political rivals Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirayi and Emmerson Mnangagwa. However, they come from different tribal groups with Mugabe and Tsvangirai being being Zezuru and Mngangagwa being Karanga. After completing two years of secondary education, she decided to join the Rhodesian Bush War
Rhodesian Bush War
The Rhodesian Bush War – also known as the Second Chimurenga or the Zimbabwe War of Liberation – was a civil war which took place between July 1964 and December 1979 in the unrecognised country of Rhodesia...

. She is said to have downed a helicopter with a machine gun on February 17, 1974 after refusing to flee.
"Incredibly, I hit the machine and there was a lot of black smoke and it crashed. A big explosion followed," she was quoted as saying of the incident in which all the occupants of the helicopter perished.


She took the nom-de-guerre Teurai Ropa (spill blood), and then rose to become one of the first women commanders in Mugabe's ZANLA forces. In 1977 she married Solomon Mujuru
Solomon Mujuru
Solomon Mujuru, also known as Rex Nhongo was a Zimbabwean military officer and politician who led Robert Mugabe's guerrilla forces during the Rhodesian Bush War. He was from the Zezuru clan. In post-independence Zimbabwe, he went on to become army chief before leaving government service in 1995...

, known then as Rex Nhongo, deputy commander-in-chief of ZANLA.

Upon return from the war, little was known of the origins of her name and her real name. Her mother, in an interview for The Sunday Mail newspaper at her rural Mount Darwin home, spoke exclusively to journalist and media anthropologist Robert Mukondiwa, to whom she revealed that Joice was a name she had also adopted during her time away at the war. Her actual name, he was told, was Runaida, which had been her late paternal aunt's name.

The Mujurus now live on a 3500 acres (14.2 km²) requisitioned farm, Alamein Farm
Alamein Farm
Alamein Farm, also known as Ruzambu Farm, is a 5,000 hectare farm at Beatrice, in the Mashonaland East area of Zimbabwe, 72 km south of the capital Harare. It was a highly productive commercial farming operation, employing around one thousand people and producing large quantities of tobacco,...

, 45 miles (72.4 km) south of Harare, which has been found by the Supreme Court in Zimbabwe to have been illegally seized from the farm owner.

Government career

At independence in 1980, Mujuru became the youngest cabinet
Cabinet (government)
A Cabinet is a body of high ranking government officials, typically representing the executive branch. It can also sometimes be referred to as the Council of Ministers, an Executive Council, or an Executive Committee.- Overview :...

 minister in Mugabe's cabinet, taking the portfolio of sports, youth and recreation. She fitted secondary school in between her busy schedule after she was appointed minister.

As minister of telecommunications, she tried to stop Strive Masiyiwa
Strive Masiyiwa
Strive Masiyiwa is a Zimbabwean businessman and cellphone pioneer, founding Econet Wireless.-Econet Wireless:Econet began its operations as a cell phone operator in 1998 in Zimbabwe, where the company is the largest telecommunications company and one of the only two listed telecoms companies...

 from establishing his independent cellphone network Econet. Masiyiwa had been given an ultimatum by the cabinet to sell his imported equipment to his rivals. On March 24, 1997, Mujuru decided to issue Zimbabwe's second cellular telephone licence to the previously unknown Zairois consortium Telecel, cutting out Masiyiwa. The Zairois consortium included her husband Solomon and President Robert Mugabe's nephew Leo. After many legal fights, Masiyiwa won his licence in December 1997.

Vice-presidency

The ZANU-PF Women's League resolved at its annual conference held in September 2004 to put forward a female candidate for the party's vice-presidency, a position left vacant following the death of Simon Muzenda
Simon Muzenda
Simon Vengai Muzenda was a Shona from the Karanga group, a Zimbabwean politician who served as a Deputy Prime Minister and vice president under President Robert Mugabe, a Shona Zezeru....

.

Mugabe bowed to pressure from a ZANU-PF faction led by Mujuru's husband, General Solomon Mujuru, to give a woman the second vice-presidency post—effectively sidelining speaker of parliament Emmerson Mnangagwa
Emmerson Mnangagwa
Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa is a Zimbabwean politician who has been Minister of Defense since February 2009. He was previously Minister of State Security from 1982 to 1988, then Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs until 2000; he was Speaker of Parliament from July 2000 to 2005 and...

, widely seen as his favoured heir. This Zanu-PF reshuffle was dubbed “the night of the long knives” by the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation.

Mujuru was sworn in as Vice-President of Zimbabwe on December 6, 2004.

Mujuru was nominated as ZANU-PF's candidate for the House of Assembly
House of Assembly of Zimbabwe
The House of Assembly of Zimbabwe is the lower chamber of the country's bicameral Parliament. It was the unicameral legislative body from 1989 until late November 2005, when the Senate was re-introduced....

 seat from Mt. Darwin West
Mt. Darwin West
Mt. Darwin West is a constituency which elects a representative to the Zimbabwe House of Assembly as of the 2008 parliamentary election.Vice-President Joyce Mujuru was the ZANU-PF candidate at the election...

 in the March 2008 parliamentary election
Zimbabwean parliamentary election, 2008
A parliamentary election was held in Zimbabwe on March 29, 2008 to elect members to both the House of Assembly and the Senate of the Zimbabwean parliament...

. According to official results she won the seat by an overwhelming margin, receiving 13,236 votes against 1,792 for Gora Madzudzo, the candidate of the Movement for Democratic Change
Movement for Democratic Change – Tsvangirai
The Movement for Democratic Change Zimbabwe is a political party and the largest party in the House of Assembly of Zimbabwe. It is the main formation formed from the split of the original Movement for Democratic Change in 2005.-Foundation:...

 (MDC) faction led by Morgan Tsvangirai
Morgan Tsvangirai
Morgan Richard Tsvangirai is the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe. He is the President of the Movement for Democratic Change - Tsvangirai and a key figure in the opposition to President Robert Mugabe. Tsvangirai was sworn in as the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe on 11 February 2009...

. This ran contrary to earlier claims from the MDC that Mujuru had lost the seat. After the election, she was again sworn in as Vice President by Mugabe on 13 October 2008, together with Msika.

She is the subject of personal sanctions imposed by the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

She currently lives on Alamein Farm
Alamein Farm
Alamein Farm, also known as Ruzambu Farm, is a 5,000 hectare farm at Beatrice, in the Mashonaland East area of Zimbabwe, 72 km south of the capital Harare. It was a highly productive commercial farming operation, employing around one thousand people and producing large quantities of tobacco,...

, a productive and high-value operation illegally requisitioned as part of a "landgrab" from Guy Watson-Smith in 2001, as found by the Zimbabwe High Court and international courts. In 2001 the Mujuru family became the subject of the first legal action against any member of Mr Mugabe's inner circle implicated in the illegal seizure of land and assets.

The seizure of Alamein Farm
Alamein Farm
Alamein Farm, also known as Ruzambu Farm, is a 5,000 hectare farm at Beatrice, in the Mashonaland East area of Zimbabwe, 72 km south of the capital Harare. It was a highly productive commercial farming operation, employing around one thousand people and producing large quantities of tobacco,...

 was ruled illegal by the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe
Supreme Court of Zimbabwe
The Supreme Court of Zimbabwe is the highest court of order and the final court of appeal in Zimbabwe.The judiciary is headed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who, like the other justices, is appointed by the President on the advice of the Judicial Service Commission. The court consists of...

.

Zimbabwe 'illegal gold sale bid'

Joice Mujuru has been implicated in the attempted sale of up to 3.5 tonnes of gold from the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a state located in Central Africa. It is the second largest country in Africa by area and the eleventh largest in the world...

 to a European company, in contravention of European Union sanctions on the part of that company.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK