Late former president Sodindo to be remembered in public lecturer

Harare- ZIMBABWE’s first post-independence president Canaan Sodindo Banana’s life will be commemorated through a public lecture dubbed Canaan Banana Memorial Public Lecture.

The event will be convened in Harare Friday.

Organisers said the event will hold great significance
for the religious community as it aims to celebrate the legacy of the late former president.

“He was a distinguished theologian and religious
leader,” said the organisers.

Despite of his decorated track record, he tainted himself when he was found guilty in 1999 of 11 counts of sodomy and abusing his power to sexually assault and carry out “unnatural acts” with men, most of whom were on his presidential staff.

Banana’s trial, which included testimony of sex with gardeners, cooks and bodyguards, overshadowed his positive role in ending the ethnic violence in Matabeleland.

Born in 1936, Banana was chosen to serve as president in a largely ceremonial post when the British colony attained independence in 1980.

He relinquished the post in 1987 when the late former president Robert Mugabe, then prime minister, became executive president.

In May 2000 Zimbabwe’s supreme court upheld Banana’s conviction for sodomy and jailed him for a year. T

The trial included lurid testimony of how he drank, danced and played cards with his bodyguard before drugging and raping him on a carpet at State House in the 1980s.

Banana insisted that he was not a homosexual and said the accusations against him were part of a “malicious vendetta”.