The loss of balance should come as no surprise, as Ms Fadzayi Mahere now teeters on the brink of her own undoing. For someone so eager to grandstand about moral rectitude and governance ethics, the creeping realisation that her meticulously staged persona is unravelling must be profoundly unsettling. One wonders if some of her male admirers—those enthralled less by her substance than by her carefully doctored photographs—would even recognise her in the flesh.
By Edmund Kudzayi
Yet vanity is only the tip of the iceberg. Mahere, who never tires of preaching accountability and castigating others for corruption, stands accused of perjury in a court of law—an allegation grave enough to warrant front-page headlines. She deliberately misrepresented the status of her legal proceedings, claiming her case was alive and awaiting setdown when, in truth, it could not have been awaiting setdown without an application for a pre-trial conference, which itself would have been impossible without minutes from the roundtable meeting with yours truly—a meeting that, as far as I know, never took place. She lied, reasoning that nobody would scrutinise a condonation application. Unfortunately for her, I did.
Stranger still is the deafening silence from this self-proclaimed paragon of transparency. Mahere, so swift to fire off tweets and posts on every conceivable national crisis, has yet to muster even a murmur of defence regarding her falsehoods. Several letters to her lawyers requesting clarification have gone unanswered. Her cheerleaders remain similarly mute.
Compounding the irony is the near-total blackout in the local press. State-run outlets can perhaps be excused, given the long shadow of her father’s connections, but what of the private media, whose editorial stances hinge on the notion of fearless truth-telling? Are they truly “independent” if they avert their eyes when one of their media darlings stands accused of flouting the very legal standards she decries in others? This inconsistency not only distorts public perception but corrodes trust in journalism at large. If editors selectively choose who merits coverage based on partisan leanings or personal fealty, then the very notion of an impartial press is a hollow farce.
Mahere’s predicament will not dissolve under the weight of her silence, nor will the illusions she has so diligently cultivated—both in her social media feed and her public persona—shield her from the long arm of accountability. Evidence of her courtroom machinations extends beyond a single misstep; I have secured damning proof of her pattern of securing victory through deception and will be publishing it soon. Her stress, if your assessment is accurate, seems a fitting prelude to the inescapable consequences that await her. Neither her father nor her media cronies can save her from that reckoning.
