By Dumisani Ndlela
HARARE – There is a thing about death that rallies friends and foes, but Amos Midzi’s demise this month failed to bring his rivals and comrades together.
Suicides are supposed to shake and break, but Midzi’s death, confirmed by an autopsy to have been possibly suicide by poisoning, was met with little surprise as if many had expected it for a long time.
For family, it was accepted that they would weep — Midzi’s brother, Stanley Midzi, said they had lost “a pillar”.
The former Zimbabwe ambassador to the United States’ daughter, Vimbai Beverley Midzi, said: “My father was a loving, considerate, compassionate, selfless and driven man. He was absolutely everything to me. He lived 63 years of truth, love and light.”
But she snapped, in a post on her Facebook wall against her father’s party, which had suspended him for five years prior to his death: “To ZANU-PF I have many words most of which I will not write now. May you never find peace and may those that publicly shamed my father also be shamed publicly. I will never stop speaking about your wickedness.”
True, Midzi had been shamed by a party he had served for many years, and to hear family and friends say that his expulsion from the party had ruined him psychologically and drove him to his death, was telling.
A colleague, Munyaradzi Banda, a former Central Committee member who had also been expelled from ZANU-PF along with Midzi told a church service held at Midzi’s Mt Pleasant home just before burial: “I can confirm that he died because of trauma caused by his suspension. Before he died, I had tea with him and he asked: ‘With the loyalty with which we served ZANU-PF, is this the way we should be treated?’”
It may have been a rhetorical question. Even before Zimbabwe’s independence, many who were perceived to have deviated from the party’s course — or gwara remusangano as it was called — were condemned and banished. It was something those who remained in the party always supported.
Midzi had encountered his fate unprepared, may be too soon, to have covered his trail.
Among many in Harare’s impoverished suburbs, and to those informal traders and commuter omnibus drivers working within the central business district, Midzi was terror personified, and the opposite of what her daughter saw as “a loving, considerate, compassionate, selfless and driven man”.
If he was “driven” by anything, it was to secure ZANU-PF’s interests and feather his nest. And he did so with callousness and viciousness.
Together with youth league members like Jim Kunaka and Godwin Gomwe, Midzi unleashed a reign of terror against political opponents in Mbare, one of Harare’s oldest suburbs, extorting from vendors and other informal traders in the town using a mafia-type group called Chipagano.
He worked with a familiar side-kick, Tendai Savanhu, who was also suspended from ZANU-PF for alleged misdemeanour.
During the 2008 and 2013 elections, Mbare had become a no-go area for the opposition, and traders suspected to have relationships with the opposition were banished from their trading stalls.
The group, which operated like a militia, was ruthless, and vendors and kombi operators were forced to pay daily fees to remain in business.
Chipangano employed rank marshals in the city centre who collected fees daily from commuter omnibuses at ranks strewn around town.
The money all eventually found its way into the pockets of a few who sat on the high table, the barbarians in town.
Yet clearly, for the 15 years he had presided over Harare province as the party’s chairman, he had entrenched himself within ZANU-PF structures, with the potential to organise its membership in the direction he wanted.
During the days before his death, the Financial Gazette has been told by reliable sources, Midzi had begun organising, through night meetings, for a political party rumoured to be spearheaded by expelled members — former party spokesperson, Rugare Gumbo, former minister of State security Didymus Mutasa and former vice-president Joice Mujuru.
The three, as well as all those who were recently purged for being allied to them, were accused of plotting to unconstitutionally topple President Robert Mugabe.
The purges started ahead of ZANU-PF’s national congress last December, with the sacking of Gumbo and former Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association leader, Jabulani Sibanda.
Mujuru and Mutasa were sacked much later, and the elimination of their allies has continued.
Another notable ZANU-PF bigwig to be sacked from the party was Nicholas Goche, a former State security minister who was minister of labour and social welfare at the time.
Prior to the ZANU-PF congress, Goche fell critically ill and was admitted at an intensive care unit of a private hospital.
Speculation swirled then that he had been a target of a planned murder, although that has not been verified.
Some reports suggested he had been in serious depression due to the ZANU-PF purges, and had consequently suffered from high blood pressure.
Two other ZANU-PF senior members linked to Mujuru died this year.
These were Aquilina Katsande, who is said by her children to have been affected by the purges in ZANU-PF which aggravated her kidney and heart ailment.
Then came former deputy minister of climate change, Simon Musanhu’s death. He is said to have collapsed and died suddenly in January.
There were suggestions Musanhu had been given a drink laced with poison.
According to ZANU-PF insiders, Midzi was among those the party considered serious threats because of his tentacles and influence in Harare, and the “night meetings” he held with party structures within the province had unsettled the status quo.
One insider said: “He was a bigger threat compared to the cantankerous Mutasa and Gumbo. He could organise and these two cannot organise.”
The other bigger threat, apparently, is a business tycoon with significant influence in the Mashonaland East province.
Although the mogul is said to be very discreet in his current manoeuvres since his expulsion from the party and Parliament a few weeks ago, sources said he was under the political radar of his erstwhile colleagues.
At the time of Midzi’s death, the party had made a surprise swoop on Gomwe, the ZANU-PF Harare province youth league chairman who was arrested for extorting housing cooperatives in the capital of over US$40 000.
There were suspicions that Gomwe met with Midzi even after the Harare provincial chairman had been condemned and disposed by the party.
The official press reported this week that Midzi was under police investigations days before his death for extorting money from housing cooperatives, the same allegations Gomwe is facing.
It has also been suggested that Midzi had huge debts which he could no longer pay after losing his position in ZANU-PF.
As a result, he was greatly depressed, a situation that many believe could have forced him to commit suicide.
But was Midzi’s death a case of perfect murder or indeed suicide?
Midzi was found dead at his farm in Beatrice. He was in his car, whose doors were locked and the keys under a carpet.
A pesticide was seen at the scene.
That is the substance which took his life, but nobody will know if this was voluntarily consumed or taken under duress.
No matter which of the two, Vimbai still blames it on ZANU-PF. Financial Gazette
