The Sunday Mail
TATELICIOUS
WE were right to doubt the claims made by Tatenda Zenzo Karigambe last week – he is a complete fraud, a gay activist and a pathological liar, whom we have now ascertained from psychiatrists could be suffering from a disease called gender dysphoria.
Karigambe offered no documentary evidence and refused an inspection by any of our publication’s female staffers to ascertain if indeed he had undergone a sex change to become a woman.
The feedback since publication of that story has been overwhelming: from former school mates, those he grew up with in Harare’s Budiriro, to those that were there when he was expelled from the Harare Institute of Technology after having been caught on camera stealing, everyone says there is no sex change to talk about.
Gender dysphoria, or gender identity disorder, is distress caused by the feeling that your gender identity does not match your biological gender. For example, a person may be born with male genitals, but thinks that he is female.
A top psychologist in the capital, who refused to be named for professional reasons, said Tatenda appears to have “conveniently created a fantasy world where he is a woman” and will cook up stories to support that fantasy.
The psychologist, whom we presented with all the information we have, said Tatenda probably loves attention as gender dysphoria manifests itself differently throughout a person’s life.
The Sunday Mail Leisure last week accepted Tatenda’s invite to dig up some more about him in Budiriro 2. The 24-year-old former HIT student, who prefers the moniker Tatelicious, is indeed a well-known character in Budiriro.
But almost everyone interviewed refused to be named except for his niece and a tenant at the house he stays, which happens to be his mother’s. Vendors, who sell their wares near Tatenda’s house, said they know him as a man, who only a few weeks ago was trying his luck with the Zimbabwe Republic Police when they were recruiting.
“Aito pfeka suit achienda kunoforera kumapurisa masvondo adarika. (He was dressing up in a suit trying to get a job with the police force just a few weeks ago),” said one lady.
“If the mother comes here while you are talking to us with that notebook of yours she will chase us away, she does not even want to hear that nonsense gay thing about her son,” she added.
The woman, who was in the company of another lady who also lives nearby, said everyone in the community knows Tatenda tends to act as a woman.
However, they both said this cross-dressing only happened when his mother was not around.
“Just recently they had a nasty fallout. He only dresses like this when the mother is not around. She travels a lot,” she said.
Tatenda’s niece, Janet, weighed in saying the guy’s father, who lives overseas, supported Tatelicious.
“Sekuru ndivo vakatofonera vanhu vese vachiti Tatenda mugamuchirei akadaro, ndizvo zvaari. (Grandfather phoned everyone back home to ask them to accept Tatenda for what he is),” Janet revealed.
She added: “(Tatenda) is my father’s young brother, making him my uncle but now I guess I have to get used to calling him auntie.”
The evidently concerned niece anxiously asked if there was a chance her uncle would get a job on the police force as this might make him change.
Investigations showed that the four-year-old child Tatenda referred to as his adopted daughter actually belongs to a tenant who has separated from his wife.
In his defence, Tatenda said that there many kids with the same name in his family and circle of friends.
Further, Tatenda never had any sex change surgery, which explains why he has been evasive on the matter in all interviews with radio stations, newspapers, online publications and television stations.
To generate the appearance of having breasts, a source says Tatenda uses “thick black condoms, which he fills with water and shapes into breasts using a bra, sometimes he stuffs things inside stockings and again shapes them into breasts”.
His former college mates at HIT dismissed him as a thief, liar and poor student who quit school during his first semester in 2012 after failing several subjects.
In an email Ngoni Chiremba said: “We started 2012 with Tatenda, doing Chemical Engineering, but he left school during the first semester because he was failing badly and he came back in 2013 as a new student and before the end of the semester he left again.” Chiremba added this writer to a WhatsApp group of HIT students who alleged Tatenda had been expelled for theft. Tatenda confirmed the expulsion, but claimed he had been framed.
On everything else, when confronted with our findings, Tatenda was adamant that all he had said previously was accurate and even promised to bring documentation.
Nothing materialised by the time of going to print.
The Registrar-General’s Office said it had not found any Tatenda Zenzo Karigambe in its database, whether as a male or as a female.
Further, indications are that the surgery Tatenda claims to have undergone to complete the sex change (breast implants and vaginoplasty/male to female sex reassignment) cost far more than the US$80 000 he says he paid in India.
Those who know Tatenda and have lived, worked and studied with him say he is a homosexual who has long pushed the very peripheral pro-gay agenda.
