PEDZISAI RUHANYA, Harare | Thursday
ZIMBABWE’S Deputy Minister of Transport and Communications, Christopher Mushowe, has acquired a masters degree in Public Administration, but he failed the exam.
High Court judge Elizabeth Gwaunza slammed the vice-chancellor of the University of the Zimbabwe, Professor Graham Hill, for awarding Mushowe a pass mark, even though he failed the examination.
The judge also took a swipe at Mushowe, who is the MP for Mutare West, for using his position at State House to induce the UZ authorities to award him the degree.
Describing Hill as an unimpressive witness, Gwaunza said: “Hill took the apparently unprecedented step of first referring the script to external examiners and then changing the failing mark to a pass mark. His explanation for having done so lacked credence”.
After failing the first attempt, Mushowe wrote a supplementary examination marked by two people who gave him 45 and 48% respectively.
Hill then gave the script to two other external examiners to ensure Mushowe got fair treatment.
“Be that as it may, Hill received from the two external examiners responses suggesting that Mushowe was entitled at best, to a very low pass mark and he was a very average student,” the judge said.
Hill then changed the 48% to a pass mark of 50%. According to UZ regulations, a failing mark in a supplementary examination, no matter how marginal, is never upgraded automatically to a pass as would happen with an original examination mark.
The court also found that Mushowe did not possess a first degree, a requirement for admission into the programme.
Despite his lack of qualifications, Mushowe was exempted from doing three first year courses in spite of objections from the post-graduate committee.
Gwaunza said the court heard that there was a general belief that Mushowe was a member of the feared Central Intelligence Organisation.
The judge said that Mushowe did not need to include the “Office of the President and Cabinet” in his contact address as he could have simply used the box number.
“It is misleading for Mushowe to say such an address was also his home address. One does not live in an office,” said Gwaunza.
“Mushowe used the presidential letterhead to put the fear of the presidential power into the UZ authorities, forcing them to admit him.
“The additional sting also comes through quite clearly. He used presidential stationery to write letters to the UZ on what in effect was a private, personal matter, that concerning his being a student at the UZ,” Gwaunza said.
Gwaunza made the ruling in a civil defamation case in which Mushowe was suing John Makumbe, a lecturer in the Department of Political Sciences and Administrative Studies, the UZ, Basildon Peta a reporter with the now defunct Sunday Gazette and its publisher, Modus Publications, for $260 000.
Mushowe said Makumbe and Peta defamed him when they said he was not qualified to be enrolled at the college and that he failed to pass his examination but used his position as an officer in Mugabes office to acquire it.
Gwaunza dismissed Mushowe’s application with costs, saying the matter was of public interest.
Two weeks ago an independent newspaper, the Standard, reported that the 77-year-old dictator’s wife, Grace (38) had passed only one out of seven examinations for a correspondence Bachelor of Arts degree she has been studying for the last five years with the University of London.
She averaged 22% in results, with 7% for “approaches to text” her lowest mark. She was taught by her husband. – DMG reporter, AFP
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