The death of Eddison Zvobgo, a Harvard-trained doctor of laws who was one of the key figures in Zimbabwean politics, has created a major power vacuum at a time of deep crisis in what was once the British colony of (Southern) Rhodesia.
For 20 years Zvobgo survived all attempts by his former ally, President Robert Mugabe, to replace him with a figure Mugabe found more amenable as the ruling Zanu-PF party’s strongman among the Karanga section of Zimbabwe’s majority Shona language group. Coming from the south eastern Masvingo region, the Karanga have dominated the police and security forces since colonial times. Mugabe comes from the Zezuru section of the Shona, located in the north. Mutual suspicions date back centuries.
As Minister of Parliamentary and Constitutional Affairs in 1987 Zvobgo was architect of Mugabe’s “imperial presidency” — whose features many felt he had designed in the belief he might himself soon take over as executive head of state.
At the time of his death Zvobgo remained an MP for the party he and Mugabe helped to found in 1964, when it split from the late Joshua Nkomo’s ZAPU (Zimbabwe African People’s Union) under the Rev Ndabaningi Sithole. Due to his chronic illness, which required treatment in South Africa, the party last year shelved disciplinary action against him for failing to campaign for Mugabe at the March 2002 presidential election. He had censured Mugabe’s “fast track” redistribution of 5,000 white-owned farms to black Zimbabweans, amendment of the constitution despite defeat in a referendum, and enactment of draconian security laws.
As chairman of a parliamen- tary committee on upcoming legislation, he described the 2002 Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Bill, curbing press freedom, as “the most determined assault on our constitu tional liberties since 1980 independence” but voted for the Bill when it passed into law. It has since been used to suppress independent newspapers and ban outspoken journalists from working.
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Eddison Jonas Mudadirwa Zvobgo was the son of a Dutch Reformed Church minister who broke with white missionaries to found his own denomination. Zvobgo said he took it upon himself as a boy to be the family representative in African nationalist politics, undergoing several years detention without trial for militant activities between 1961 and 1971 when he was released and went into exile. After leaving school he had trained as a teacher then took law degrees at Roma University, Lesotho, and at Harvard.
He served in the portfolios of Local Government, Justice, and Constitutional Affairs in successive governments after the 1980 triumph of Zanu-PF in British- sponsored elections.
As ruling party chairman in Masvingo province he was implicated in the 1984 disappearance of the opposition activists Shangwa Mangwengwe and James Magura, last seen being taken away from a house in Masvingo in a Land Rover belonging to the ZanuPF.
Their mutilated bodies were later found in a river bed, but local police treated their murder as “death from natural causes”. The province became a no-go area for opposition until recent inroads made by Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) with whom Zvobgo conducted informal talks but declined to identify himself.
Zvobgo defied Mugabe’s austere Marxist-Leninist “leadership code” to build up a major business empire in his home area, including hotels and shops. Many commentators attributed his reluctance to break finally with Mugabe to fear that his wife and four children would be left destitute.
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In 1986, fist fights broke out at a Zanu-PF women’s conference when Mugabe imposed his Ghanaian first wife, Sally, as leader of the influential women’s league in place of Zvobgo’s wife, Julia, who had been overwhelmingly elected. At Julia Zvobgo’s state funeral earlier this year Mugabe for the first time delegated delivery of the eulogy to his vice-president, Joseph Msika. This was interpreted as a mark of the tensions between the two families.
A close associate of Zvobgo, the prominent MP Dzikamai Mavaire, was expelled for telling legislators: “The president must go”, and Zvobgo’s serious injury in a vehicle crash aroused passions despite his assurances that it was an accident.
Zvobgo announced he would stand as presidential candidate in 2002 if the ageing head of state volunteered not to do so. With the death of Zvobgo, Mugabe is expected to make renewed efforts to install parliamentary speaker Emmerson Manangagwa or recently retired air force commander, Air Marshal Josiah Tungamirai, as “kingmaker” of the Karanga.
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Eddison Zvobgo, politician, was born on October 2, 1935. He died on August 22, 2004, aged 68.