Tuesday, August 4, 2009

HARARE – The vice President of Zimbabwe, Joseph Msika, has died.Born on December 23, 1923, Msika had been Vice President since December 1999 when he took over after the death of former PF-Zapu leader Dr Joshua Nkomo.

Msika collapsed at home in March 2005, apparently having suffered a stroke and a blood clot in the head and was rushed to hospital. He then underwent an operation in South Africa.


He has been ailing since then. President Robert Mugabe informed his Zanu PF party’s central committee in June that Msika was not well.

It was reported in the press that Msika had, in fact indicated that he wanted to step down from the office of Vice President but Mugabe had insisted that he stay on.

At 86 Msika was Mugabe’s senior by two months.

The Financial Gazette reported in June that the Vice President had been admitted to St Anne’s Hospital in Harare twice within a fortnight to correct complications arising from the operation he had in South Africa.

Msika did not run in the March 2005 parliamentary elections, but Mugabe appointed him to one of the thirty unelected seats in Parliament. He also did not stand for election in the March 2008 parliamentary election. Mugabe, however, appointed him to the Senate in August 2008 and then swore him in as Vice President on 13 October 2008, together with Joice Mujuru.

In January 2009 Msika was apparently well enough to stand in as acting President when Mugabe went on his customary annual leave.

Msika was originally a member and vice-president of Nkomo’s PF-Zapu. The party merged with Mugabe’s Zanu-PF in December 1987 under a unity agreement which brought the Gukurahundi massacres in Matabeleland and the Midlands provinces to an end.

A veteran politician Msika was arrested in 1964 and held in detention until 1975. Msika was a member of the ZAPU delegation to the Lancaster House Conference that negotiated independence for Zimbabwe in 1980.

At a rally held in Bulawayo in October 2006 Msika dismissed Mugabe’s previous apology for the Gukurahundi killings, condemned internationally for the violence unleashed on innocent Ndebele peasants over a four-year period.

“When we asked him about the massacres he apologized, but I was not convinced about his sincerity,” Msika said.

* Zimbabwe Times