President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s former advisor, Eddie Cross, has issued a public apology after being summoned to State House to explain comments he made in a recent interview with Newzroom Afrika. In the interview, Cross alleged that Mnangagwa’s sons were very corrupt.
During the live interview with the South African television station, which took place ahead of the planned March 31 protests, Cross claimed that the amount of money being stolen likely exceeds the national budget.
He also suggested that Mnangagwa had not addressed corruption in Zimbabwe because some of his children were involved in large-scale criminal activities. Said Cross:
The problem is his not been able to tackle some of the fundamental problems we have for example, he has not tackled corruption in fact there’s lots of evidence that his own family is deeply corrupt, that some of his children are engaged in criminal activity on a large scale and he’s not tackled that and I think if he would tackle a few of those, I mean the amount of money being stolen here is just enormous it probably exceeds our national budget.
After being summoned to State House to explain his remarks, Cross issued an apology and retracted his comments.
In a statement released on Saturday, April 5, Cross admitted that he could not provide solid evidence to support the allegations against Mnangagwa’s children. He wrote:
On Monday the 31st of March I gave an interview to a South African television station regarding the stay-away that took place that day across the country. In that interview, I stated that one of the reasons for this event was dissatisfaction with the very substantial corruption taking place across the country. I also stated that the President’s family were involved.
On Tuesday, I requested a meeting with the President and told him that I recognized that I should not have involved his family, and I apologized unreservedly. He expressed concern about the substance of my general allegations on the magnitude of corruption and asked that I substantiate this. I agreed to provide him with a dossier of what I understand is going on. On the issue of his children being involved, he asked who was implicated, and I identified 3 of his sons.
On Wednesday, I returned to State House to discuss this further with the three men involved and I outlined what I was hearing but could not provide firm evidence to support these allegations and rumors. I again apologized and said I would withdraw my statement on this matter.
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