Joice Mujuru - Early Life

Early Life

Mujuru was born in Zimbabwe's northeastern district of Mt. Darwin, a Shona from the Korekore language group . As a Shona (a conglomeration of various tribes with a common sounding Bantu language) she is of the same language group as late co-Vice President Joseph Msika and President Robert Mugabe as well as political rivals Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirayi and Emmerson Mnangagwa. However, they come from different tribal groups with Mugabe being Zezuru and Mngangagwa and Tsvangirai being Karanga. After completing two years of secondary education, she decided to join the Rhodesian Bush War. She is said to have downed a helicopter with a machine gun on February 17, 1974 after refusing to flee.

"Incredibly, I hit the machine and there was a lot of black smoke and it crashed. A big explosion followed," she was quoted as saying of the incident in which all the occupants of the helicopter perished.

She took the nom-de-guerre Teurai Ropa (spill blood), and then rose to become one of the first women commanders in Mugabe's ZANLA forces. In 1977 she married Solomon Mujuru, known then as Rex Nhongo, deputy commander-in-chief of ZANLA.

Upon return from the war, little was known of the origins of her name and her real name. Her mother, in an interview for The Sunday Mail newspaper at her rural Mount Darwin home, spoke exclusively to journalist and media anthropologist Robert Mukondiwa, to whom she revealed that Joice was a name she had also adopted during her time away at the war. Her actual name, he was told, was Runaida, which had been her late paternal aunt's name.

The Mujurus now live on a 3,500-acre (14 km2) requisitioned farm, Alamein Farm, 45 miles (72 km) south of Harare, which has been found by the Supreme Court in Zimbabwe to have been illegally seized from the farm owner.