Vice President Kembo Mohadi of Zimbabwe resigned Monday after a month of media exposes that purportedly caught him soliciting sex from married women, including an intelligence officer who was one of his subordinates.
One of the audiotapes Zimbabwean online media published included Mohadi proposing a sexual liaison inside his vice presidential office.
An online news outlet called ZimLive ignited the scandal last month by posting three recorded telephone conversations of Mohadi, 71, propositioning married women. Mohadi “categorically” denied the authenticity of the recordings at first.
“I am innocent and a victim of political machinations being peddled through hacking and voice cloning,” he said in late February.
One of the phone calls that brought Mohadi down involved him pressuring a female intelligence officer named Abigail Mumpande for sex. Mumpande was reportedly distraught over harassment from the vice president, prompting her husband to hand the recording over to the media and demand reassignment for his wife.
“Despite growing impatient because of days of weird character assassinations, I wish to categorically state that the allegations being levelled against me are not only false but also well-choreographed to demean, condescend, and spoil my image as a national leader and patriot,” he charged.
“I remain a committed leader, father, cadre and servant of this great nation. So, nothing is going to change because all this is concocted to tarnish my image. If anything is going to happen it is going to be His Excellency who will determine my future,” Mohadi vowed, referring to socialist President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
On Monday, Mohadi announced he was resigning “not as a matter of cowardice but as a sign of demonstrating great respect to the office of the President.”
“I have been going through a soul-searching pilgrimage and realized that I need the space to deal with my problem outside the governance chair,” he said.
Mohadi continued to insist the evidence of his improper behavior was fabricated and pledged to take legal action against those who have allegedly defamed him.
Voice of America News (VOA) described Mohadi’s resignation over sexual misconduct allegations as “a rare move by a public official in the southern African country,” even more so because Mohadi was fairly close to both the current and previous strongman rulers of the country.
Like President Mnangagwa, Mohadi had a resume of both military and intelligence work and held ministerial rank under longtime dictator Robert Mugabe. He has been one of Zimbabwe’s two vice presidents since Mugabe’s ouster in 2017. The other is Constantino Chiwenga, 61, the former military commander who engineered the coup against Mugabe a decade after helping Mugabe stay in power after he lost an election.
Mohandi himself is currently single. His marriage to ex-wife Tambudzani Bhudagi, a Zimbabwean senator, dissolved over allegations of Mohandi’s infidelity. In March 2019, an argument between Mohandi and his ex-wife over the disposition of communal property escalated until he used an axe to smash through the door she slammed on him, prodded her with a steel bar, and threatened to shoot her, all in full view of about two dozen police officers.
According to the police, the elderly vice president was too exhausted to assault Bhudagi with his metal bar, so he took a seat for a while until he felt better, then ordered all of the witnesses into every available vehicle and drove away, leaving Bhudagi to walk to the local police station to file a report.
“The police said I must go and report, but they were witnesses to what happened. They saw him commit this crime,” Bhudagi declared in frustration.
Mohadi proceeded to sort-of marry his much younger mistress, Juliet Mutavhatsindi, although she was never formally introduced to the public as the vice president’s wife. Mutavhatsindi left Mohadi abruptly in November 2020.
“She left the VP in a huff. I am not sure what triggered the breakup but it has been a while now since they parted ways. The challenge with these younger women is that they still want to enjoy life. They are free spirited,” a source close to Mohadi sighed to the Zim Morning Post in November.
“The challenge is if you get a trophy woman, she is bound to create some sort of drama,” another of the Zim Morning Post’s sources observed. “It has happened elsewhere, look at how Monica Lewinsky destroyed Bill Clinton’s decorated political career.”