Zanu-PF Politburo member and Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education, Oppah Muchinguri, is now officially married to a Pentecostal clergyman – Bishop Anthony Kashiri. With that new matrimonial status she will assume a new title, “Mai Mufundisi”. The two are believed to have been love-birds for some time but did all they could to put the relationship under wraps to avoid unnecessary publicity.
Muchinguri paraded her new-found love around in public last Thursday at Mutare Polytechnic during the provincial co-ordination committee meeting and Headlands Hall where thousands of Zanu-PF supporters from Headlands constituency had converged to petition the party leadership to expel their representative in the National Assembly, Didymus Mutasa, from the party and august House.
She confirmed Bishop Kashiri as the apple of her eye. “Where is he? My better half, where are you? Oh, there he is!  This is my husband, and we are happily married,” said Muchinguri, to some wild ululations and whistling from the jubilant crowd. “I am now Amai Kashiri,” she added. “You continue to refer to me as Amai Muchinguri because probably you did not know that I am now married. “I am now Amai Kashiri,” she said with a radiant smile.
The lovebirds posed briefly for a photo-shoot from journalists. “We have all along been keeping a low profile as we tried to avoid paparazzi.” she said referring to journalists’ snoopy appetite for titillating news.
Reliable sources maintain that a big wedding was on the cards soon for the Cabinet minister after a recent  conclusion of customary proceedings between the two families. Bishop Kashiri has been in the USA for years and is believed to have had his own family as well. Muchinguri was previously married to Botswana-based trader Mr Tapiwa Rushesha and their marriage ended in the late 1990s. She opted to drop her marital last name as she switched back to her maiden name, Muchinguri.