Gamu is lying through her back teeth.

The only reason that President Mugabe may actually be aware of her existence, if at all, is because of the way she is manipulating bad press against Zimbabwe because she does not want to go home, ever.

In fact, I think her mother is behind all the negative propaganda because nowhere else in the world would she receive such benefits and such publicity as in the village of Tillicoultry, Clackmannanshire.

Like any mother, she obviously has dreams for her children, and more so the £100,000 she thinks Gamu is likely to win. However, if they had stayed under the radar in Scotland, no one would have been any the wiser until it was too late to deport them, and they could have accumulated a lot more benefits.

Saying that President Mugabe is going to kill her is ludicrous when she and her family did not come over here claiming political asylum. There are ex Rhodesian military service men who return regularly and visit their families there, and they don’t have problems with Mr Mugabe so why should she?


Can we have the facts please on Gamu’s correct age.
In the first instance she claims to have been in the UK for eight years. She is supposed to be 18. In today’s Sun she claims to have lived in Jonassi until she was 13. If she is 18 now she has been here for a mere five years.

Either way no one can deny that Gamu had an excellent education in Zimbabwe no matter how poor they were. Millions live in shantytowns and shacks, including many whites, because that is the way it is in Africa. Those photos of “where she lived” could be anywhere in Africa.

Everyone knows that Zimbabwe is desperate for nurses, and if her mother were at all patriotic she would return to work there in the medical profession, as with her overseas experience, she must now be highly qualified to work in any hospital in Zimbabwe.

Everyone ‘piggy-backs’ on bad news because you and I both know that only bad news sells.  My family still live in Zimbabwe with my three grandchildren, and they would rather be there than anywhere else on the planet. Fifteen years ago, my daughter and her husband spent six months backpacking around the world and they returned to settle and raise their children in Zimbabwe. They still live there and would not dream of leaving, and although they are white, my ex- husband was a black Shona musician and my stepson is an 18-year-old black youth.

I had an email this week saying that Zimbabwe is “jumping” (to use their expression), and it is just as exciting to be there now as it was in the ‘nineties.
(It must be all the diamond fields that are being discovered on a daily basis? We might as well have discovered OIL because of the Sanctions which are obviously being maintained now for simply for that reason.)

On the other hand, Gamu is just one person, black or white, and the point I am trying to make is why should she get all this special attention because she was on some television programme when there are more deserving cases in our midst, both black and white Zimbabweans, and let me reassure you that in their midst there are some really amazing musicians because music comes naturally to us.

As for the death threats against Cheryl, for not placing her in her category of potential winners, what has this got to do with anything! It is appalling. She has won it for the last two years and has a good idea of what talent is necessary to win, but in this instance Simon is hiding behind her skirts and hanging her out to dry since she has become Public Enemy No. 1.

Since the BBC have now taken up residence in Zimbabwe, you no longer hear terrible propaganda about that country. The reason there are problems in Zimbabwe is because of Sanctions, which are crippling not only the country, but also the man in the street who cannot get a job and pay school fees.

Why Gamu did not ask for Sanctions to be lifted? Instead she kicked off by bleating about bread and milk which has now escalated into screaming about Mugabe sending his henchmen to kill her off?

My new book ZAMBEZI WIND SONG has been rejected several times and I believe it is because it is not your usual, “I once had a farm in Africa and I lost everything I had etc etc.…sob, sniff, weep, howl, bastards etc etc.,” and so I have now self-published.  It will be on sale on amazon.com in December.

Zambezi Wind Song is based on my growing up in that country which was ruled by the Rhodesian Front, which focused on the mother of Apartheid, separate development. However, since this 30-year old black state is now independent, no one wants to hear that things are actually fine in Zimbabwe.

It has long been my decision to remain in Britain until I get my story published, but once this is done I will be returning to Zimbabwe, sometime in 2011. (I was born there because my father was a RAF instructor in Rhodesia.) Otherwise I have managed to visit every year.

I have four other children’s stories to publish, the original of which is already out there, Uncle’s Glass Eye (ISBN 141208870-4).  This, the first in the sequel, was approved by the Ministry of Education, Sport and Culture Education Services, Harare, Zimbabwe in June 2006 as a supplementary reader for Senior Primary and Junior Secondary pupils.  In addition, I was commissioned by the Ministry of Health to script Malaria and Birth Control films for the rural areas throughout Zimbabwe.

In between writing for The Promota (East and southern Africa), The Zimbabwe Guardian, Air Zimbabwe’s in-flight reading magazine, Skyhost and self-publishing, I work as a charity volunteer for Oxfam and the British Heart Foundation.  At the same time I buy and collect library books for the children in rural schools where there is no electricity; this means that they have no access to computers as do the school children living in towns.

Donette Read Kruger