Source: Mugabe defends Chiwenga’s PhD – DailyNews Live
Andrew Kunambura 16 August 2017
HARARE – President Robert Mugabe yesterday chose the packed National
Sports Stadium as the best platform to heap praises on the military boss
Constantino Chiwenga for attaining a doctorate degree – while in the
process invalidating claims by Higher and Tertiary Education minister
Jonathan Moyo – who had questioned how he acquired it.
Moyo last month questioned Chiwenga’s PhD from University of KwaZulu
Natal, South Africa, when he challenged the commander of the Defence
Forces to come clean on the real authors of “his” dissertation.
This was after Chiwenga had issued a stinging and ominous statement which
made veiled threats at Moyo in a development which political analysts said
was being fuelled by Mugabe’s unresolved succession issue.
Yesterday Mugabe, who gave a very short speech at the 37th commemorations
of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) day, spoke glowingly about Chiwenga’s
academic achievement before a bumper crowd which responded with a
thunderous applause.
Mugabe – a stellar academic in his own right – congratulated Chiwenga for
producing a “very good doctorate degree”.
“Our top commander is now known as Dr Chiwenga. He studied for a very good
doctorate,” Mugabe said.
“He did what every other doctorate student does, which is to carry out a
comprehensive research which will then be used as a case study by other
people studying the same field,” he said.
Mugabe further said Chiwenga was leading by example as the most senior
military man in the country.
“I had not congratulated him on the attainment of his doctorate degree, I
am very happy with it. It is now two years since he earned the degree.
“He is leading by example and we expect junior army officers to emulate
him. We have opened the National Defence University where our young
officers can study and earn top degrees,” said Mugabe.
Moyo had suggested that Chiwenga had his UKZN dissertation written for
him.
Chiwenga’s paper examined alleged double standards in United Nations
Security Council humanitarian missions, according to information published
by the university’s in-house periodicals in 2015.
The university said Chiwenga’s thesis found that there was “a precipitous
decline of UN moral stature, particularly in the eyes of the developing
world.”
But following a public spat with Chiwenga, Moyo took to microblogging site
Twitter to claim that the army supremo did not write the thesis on his
own.
“Finally, I’m happy that Chiwenga wants pre and post-independence
disclosures about who was who, who did what and so forth. That’s good.
“Meanwhile, I take that to mean he wants the disclosure of who contributed
what to his doctorate and who really wrote his KZN PhD,” Moyo wrote.
Chiwenga claims to have interviewed Mugabe – a fierce critic of the UN
Security Council – during his investigation.
Yesterday was the second time that Mugabe had appeared to correct Moyo’s
differing statements.
On June 30, during a youth interface rally in Masvingo, Mugabe praised the
Command Agriculture programme just weeks after Moyo had rubbished it.
“The vice president (Emmerson) Mnangagwa initiated Command Agriculture
with the first lady in an attempt to unite people, their concern was that
why can’t we unite people sezvo taita nzara.
“They sat down the two of them, we didn’t even know it….that’s when they
came up with the idea…and we accepted that it was a good project and
that it would need
“What wrong did Mnangagwa do? (In fact) this is what we call ideas,”
Mugabe said to ignite loud cheers from the big crowd.
“This is our programme that comes under the ministry of Agriculture Dr
(Joseph) Made. A very beautiful programme. We must not kill it. We see the
fruits of this programme, a bumper harvest,” added Mugabe.
Moyo had repeatedly savaged Mnangagwa on Twitter, where he described
Command Agriculture in disparaging terms.
In one of his tweets Moyo has described Command Agriculture as Command
Ugly Culture while also claiming it was being led by “Command Thieves”.
COMMENTS
Robert Mugabe has become an acknowledged expert at defending suspicious PhDs. His wife’s two week special PhD, which he defended like a lion, was the one that needed the most scrutiny but its dissertation is still not open to public view at the University of Zimbabwe.
But perhaps even his own many degrees need a second look at. My information is that he was “helped” more that necessary with these by a certain Irish nun, who was at that time a lecturer at our late University of Rhodesia.
The highly respected Chief Justice Dumbutshena was spot on when he described them as “pull him downs”. Except it should be “him/her”.
Ah, shuwa maPhDs akazara munyika. Asi maPhDs enyu iwaya ngeekuitei? Kuba? Kuba maDiamonds, tumatombo twamunoenda kumaChina mopfugama moti ndipe yaunoda?
Munogadzira ndege here? Munogadzira upfumi hupi nemaDr titles enyu? Bill Gates is no Dr. Mark Zuckerberg is no Dr. Asi imi nevana venyu munoswerera muchishandisa ma products avo, muchibhadhara nemari dzekuba.
Educated FOOLS!