War heroine Victoria Chitepo dies

War heroine Victoria Chitepo, widow to the late national hero Hebert Chitepo, has died this afternoon according to an announcement by President Robert Mugabe.

Mugabe said Mai Chitepo was found by her daughter in the bathroom this afternoon. Mai Chitepo, a member of the party’s central committee, was reportedly preparing to come to the meeting and her daughter who had gone to pick her up found her dead.

”She was one of us politically, one of us politically, and physically…it is a loss to all of us….and as we await the full story of what happened..let us pay tribute to her by observing a moment of silence,” said Mugabe.

More details as we get them……..

Herbert Chitepo, who was the Zanu PF chairman, was killed by a car bomb placed in his Volkswagen Beetle in Zambia in 1975. A report produced by a commission of inquiry into Chitepo’s death has never been made public in Zimbabwe.

In July 2001, and after 16 years of silence, Chitepo’s wife Victoria claimed that her husband’s murder was an internal Zanu job, and demanded unsuccessfully that his killers be brought to justice.

Her plea followed statements by Kaunda that Chitepo’s Zanu opponents, not Rhodesian agents, were responsible for the killing.

Veteran nationalist James Chikerema, who with Chitepo was one of the founding members of Zapu before Zanu split, had another theory about his death. “I knew Chitepo for years. He was murdered by Tongogara and the Karanga mafia,” he claimed.