Banana Rapist"Canaan Banana was Zimbabwe's first black president, serving as head of state for seven years after independence in 1980...
"For much of his time in office, President Banana's job was to look dignified at posh events, such as Prince Charles's wedding to Lady Diana Spencer. His light workload left him with plenty of time for his hobby, which was raping his male attendants. Though he lacked real power, he was quite powerful enough to torment underlings with impunity, despite the fact that homosexual acts are punishable by jail terms of up to ten years in Zimbabwe.
"It was only when one of his victims killed a man that the story came out. In 1997, Jefta Dube, a former bodyguard who was on trial for murder, pleaded in mitigation that the man he shot had humiliated him by calling him 'Banana's wife'. He told the court that while he was in Mr Banana's service in the mid-1980s, the president had repeatedly raped him. The first time, he said, Mr Banana played cards with him, drank with him and drugged him. He woke up on the carpet of the State House library with no trousers, and was greeted by a smiling president who said: 'We helped ourselves.' ... When Mr Dube begged him to stop molesting him, he refused with the words: 'I am the final court of appeal.'"
[In 1998, Banana was convicted of 11 counts of sodomy and unnatural acts. He served eight months of a ten-year sentence (during which he was allowed to go out shopping). He was provided with a lavish tax-free pension, cars, servants and a lifetime exemption from import duty. "After Mr Banana died, reportedly of cancer, he was denied the hero's burial that senior ruling-party hacks traditionally receive. Not because he was a rapist, but because he had been publicly revealed to be a homosexual shortly after Mr Mugabe had denounced such people as 'worse than dogs and pigs.'"]
[Trivia: In 1982 a law was passed banning jokes about Banana's name.]
Banana, Canaan Sodindo (1936-2003) Zimbabwean clergyman and politician, president of Zimbabwe (1980-1987)
[Sources: The Economist, Nov 29th 2003]More Canaan Banana anecdotesRelated Anecdote Keywords:
Names Crime Tyrants Zimbabwe Rape
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