Zimbabwean big brother finalist to get $300,000 from Mugabe, says Vote was rigged

A group of president Robert Mugabe's rich allies say voting was not "free and fair" in Big Brother Africa - and have promised to pay Zimbabwe's losing housemate £191,000 in compensation ($300,000).

Mr Mugabe's nephew, business tycoon Philip Chiyangwa, said the mobile phone voting system in the TV reality show was "unfair".

The Zimbabwean contestant, Munyaradzi Chidzonga, 24, was tipped to win the 91-day show but narrowly lost to a Nigerian housemate in the final vote on Sunday. He would have got £127,000 if he had won.

"The whole process was flawed. The entire vote was flawed," Mr Chiyangwa fumed, calling the show "a disgrace to Africa". Officials from MNET Africa, the continent-wide satellite TV company, said yesterday Mr Mugabe's office had demanded recordings from the show.

The president's allies have found the row over the winner a perfect propaganda opportunity for his Zanu-PF party. Mr Chidzonga's "patriotism" is being contrasted with Scottish-based Zimbabwean singer Gamu Nhengu, who was controversially eliminated from ITV's X Factor just before her UK visa ran out and has been critical of the Mugabe regime.

State media yesterday accused her of ‘peddling falsehoods about Zimbabwe,' a charge that carries a jail penalty under current laws.

Flawed and cooked

In contrast, Zimbabwe's Big Brother Africa housemate maintains that his ambition is to meet Mr Mugabe. He often appeared in the show draped in the national flag.

Mr Mugabe's nephew - a former Zanu-PF MP - has already promised Mr Chidzonga a house from his Pinnacle Holdings property company and says that if more than £191,000 is raised, "we will give it to him".

"The results were flawed and were cooked up because indications from the previous week showed Munya (radzi) was way ahead until they decided to rob him of his victory," Mr Chiyangwa complained.

The money will help the Zimbabwean housemate "get over the trauma" of losing, the Herald said. But the sheer amount of it will be unimaginable to many locals struggling to survive in an economy wrecked by three decades of misrule under Mr Mugabe, now 86.

Despite gains made under a shaky 19-month old coalition deal between the president and former opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, two million Zimbabweans - a sixth of the population - still do not have access to clean water, Unicef said last week. A million children have been orphaned by Aids.