Confessions of a party heavyweight

My informant was an employee in the Ministry of Justice and Parliamentary Affairs. I did not know her exact job, but she was a clerk of some sort. She was a slim twenty-five year old who had an odd combination of being conservative and being incredibly sexy. She almost always wore long skirts and long dresses. I had only seen her once in jeans. I was totally Zimbabwean, but had spend too many years in America and I had seen too many miniskirts. Nyasha was always a welcome refreshing sight whenever I came to Zimbabwe to report on how ‘badly’ the country was doing.

            Nyasha Mtandwa came to my hotel room at the Monomotapa Crown Plaza at 10pm. She had been feeding me information for the past six months. She placed a disk on the table and declared that she was hungry. I called room service and she placed a salad order that left me wondering if she was really hungry. We chatted about my travels and her endless squabbles with her boss and how it was ‘so impossible to survive on a government salary.’ And I wondered why she did not want me to pay her for the stories she gave me. Her salad came after ten minutes and she quickly ate it and jumped up and went into the bathroom. I put the disk she had brought into the laptop.

            The DVD featured the minister of Cultural Identity and Heritage, Ignatius Jirivengwa. He was seated behind the desk in his huge office. A young woman came in. He motioned for her to sit in the visitors’ desk. There was no audio. They talked for some time and after about five minutes; the young woman got up and sat on the desk; her dress had a very long slit that exposed most of her thigh. They talked for a few more minutes with the young woman clearly seducing the minister. He eventually slid his hand up her dress. She stopped him, opened her bag, took out a condom and gave it to him. They had sex on the minister’s desk. It was over in a very short time and the young woman straightened her dress with the composure of someone who had done it many times before.

            Nyasha came out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her body and another wrapped around her head. It was like someone had punched me in the stomach. It was the first time I had seen anything above Nyasha’s knees and it was a wonderful sight. My erection at that moment was my fastest ever.

            “She practically seduced him,” she said as she dropped the towel to the floor. I could have died there and then. She was so comfortable with her nakedness to such an extent that I was forced to behave as if I was also comfortable with the whole situation.

“What for?” I asked, battling hard to control my breathing.

“The university scholarships launched by government six months ago.”

She sat cross-legged in her panties and bra on the bed and I joined her. She was so eager and I couldn’t believe my luck.

“It was wonderful,” I said thirty minutes later and I totally meant it. She buried her face in my armpit and I felt hot tears on my body. I lifted her head and looked at her; worried.

“I am okay,” she reassured me, “I am just happy.”

I called the minister the next day and he graciously invited me to his office. He was in his early fifties. I told him why I was there: He was giving out scholarships in return for sexual favours.

“You are telling me you would turn down a sexual invitation from a young, sexy woman?”

For a moment I remembered Nyasha’s legs wrapped around me and how she had screamed almost in disbelief as she climaxed.

“No I would not. But I would not take that sexual favour in return for something that I am supposed to give based on merit.”

The minister got up and paced around his office for a few minutes. He seemed to be deep in thought.

“I guess you are right. But the young woman qualified for the scholarship anyway. She would have gotten it without having sex with me.”

“So you took advantage of her?”

“She offered sex and I took it. To me, the scholarship and the sex were totally separate issues.”

“Your wife doesn’t mind you cheating on her?”

“She passed away a few years ago.” He was silent for what seemed like an eternity. “Do you know how I became a member of the ruling party?”  I did not respond. I did not want him to get out of his reverie. I was probably onto a bigger story than that of a man fucking a young woman who obviously wanted to be fucked. He told his story slowly and I was in his office for three hours.

Many years ago he was a young shift supervisor at Eastern Highlands tea factory, about a hundred kilometres from the city of Mutare. He stayed in the compound with the rest of the workers: Management was still sorting out ‘more appropriate’ accommodation for him. He stayed in that one room with his young wife; he had been married for only a month.

            One day, a group of members of the ruling party had visited him and introduced themselves as ‘war veterans’. He was having sex with his wife when they knocked on the door. They just wanted to make sure that everyone understood the party’s agenda and that no outsiders were there to influence the locals. Ignatius agreed with everything they said and as they were leaving, one of them looked at his wife.

“You have a beautiful wife.” It was not a compliment.

“Let’s go Jeremiah,” nervously said one of the younger ‘war veterans’. He clearly knew what was going to happen. Jeremiah did not listen. He approached Ignatius’ wife and pulled off the cloth that was covering her body. She stood naked in the cold room. Ignatius made an instinctive move to try and protect his wife. Two of the ‘war veterans’ blocked his way. He watched as Jeremiah pushed his wife to the floor and force her legs apart. A minute later, two of the war veterans who had blocked his way lay dead and the rest were sprinting into the tea plantation. No one, including Ignatius himself could explain what had happened besides the fact that he had saved his wife from getting raped. How he had reached for the cooking stick that killed the two ‘war veterans’ without being overpowered by a group of five men remained a mystery.

“I was never arrested for those two murders and I was ‘invited’ to join the party and I rose rapidly to the top of the structures. That was long before the term war veteran become very well known,” he paced the office for a few minutes more, “I guess it doesn’t help to try and say the story is off record.”

“I guess not. How come you never got arrested?”

“A comrade with two murders hanging over his head is better than a comrade who is in prison. I have never regretted killing those two men and  my wife respected and loved me until she died a few years ago.”

I wrote the minister’s story for the New York Times and that article made my career. Nyasha moved to New York the next year and we always laugh about how I was a fool for many months, believing that she was just an informant.