Zimbabwe vice president Muzenda dies at 81

Zimbabwe Vice President Simon Muzenda, long a loyal aide of Robert Mugabe, has died, state radio reported. He was 81.

The radio said Muzenda died at the main Parirenyatwa hospital in the capital, Harare. It gave no cause of death.

Mr Muzenda had become increasingly frail in the past year and virtually withdrew from public life. He attended few state functions and seldom appeared in public carrying out his official duties as the senior of two vice presidents.

Mr Muzenda had been receiving medical treatment in China but returned home in July, when he was admitted to the coronary care unit for the critically ill at the main hospital.

The radio quoted Mr Mugabe mourning what he called “a great loss indeed to the nation”.

Though it left Mr Mugabe without the most trusted political associate in his “old guard”, the Vice President’s death was not expected to create a power vacuum as the troubled southern African country faces its worst political and economic crisis since independence from Britain in 1980.

Mr Mugabe, 79, who led the nation to independence, has been under increasing pressure to step down and was not expected to immediately name a successor to Mr Muzenda.

The gruff, one-time carpenter was one of the least educated politicians in the ruling elite but was rewarded for his loyalty with high office that brought him wealth and status.

He was frequently the target of ridicule over his humble origins and often clumsy politicking.

During campaigning for parliamentary elections in 2000, Mr Muzenda told supporters of the ruling ZANU-PF party in his home district in southern Zimbabwe that the party was so popular there that “if we put a baboon as a candidate people will vote for it”.

His campaign in parliamentary elections a decade earlier was marred by police agents’ shooting of an opposition candidate standing against him.

Two police agents were convicted in the attempted murder of opposition politician Patrick Kombayi, who was permanently disabled, but were pardoned by Mr Mugabe soon after their trial.

Mr Muzenda was not implicated in the shooting.

Simon Vengayi Muzenda was born on October 28, 1922 in the Gutu district of southern Zimbabwe. He was educated at a church mission school and later obtained a diploma in carpentry in neighbouring South Africa.

For his political activism against colonial rule, he spent most of the decade 1962-72 in prison or under colonial restriction orders curtailing his movements.

He fled into exile in neighbouring Zambia and then to Mozambique, joining Mr Mugabe in reorganising the ZANU party and its guerrilla war against the white government of Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe was known.

After independence, Mr Mugabe, then prime minister, appointed him deputy prime minister and foreign minister. Mr Mugabe became executive president in 1987, naming Mr Muzenda his first vice president.

Funeral arrangements were yet to be announced.