Former comrade who challenged Mugabe dies at 74

Jun 8, 2011, 14:06 GMT

Harare - Edgar Tekere - Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's former right-hand man, who later went on to challenge him - has died at the age of 74, family friends confirmed Wednesday.

Tekere, who died Tuesday of prostate cancer in the eastern city of Mutare, helped found Mugabe's Zanu-PF party in 1963 and was its secretary general in 1980, at the time Zimbabwe achieved independence.

He was regarded as a firebrand opponent of the white minority Rhodesian government and a 'hero of the struggle' for independence.

Also known as Two-boy, Edgar Zivanai Tekere's political life began when he was a teenager, as a militant youth member of the black nationalist movement.

In 1957 he was detained under state of emergency laws, later spending 10 years in detention with Mugabe, where the two developed a close relationship.

He was with Mugabe when the future president crossed into neighbouring Mozambique in 1975 to seize control of the anti-Rhodesian guerilla movement set up in exile there.

But just four months after independence, on a drunken spree with seven of his bodyguards, Tekere raided a white farm and shot dead farmer Gerald Adams.

He was acquitted of murder on a technicality at his trial in December 1980, with the tribunal making use of former Rhodesian government laws that granted amnesty to security forces who killed black guerillas 'in the call of duty.'

A month later he was removed from his post as manpower minister after making a series of comments opposing government policies and began to oppose Mugabe from within the party - the first open sign of defiance of Mugabe's rule.

He attacked the corruption that had quickly developed since independence and is credited with leading the group that blocked Mugabe's plans to form a one-party state.

In 1988 he was expelled from Zanu-PF and formed his own party, the Zimbabwe Unity Movement, to challenge Mugabe in elections in 1990, which he lost badly.

A heavy drinker, his political profile dropped over the years, although he supported the opposition Movement for Democratic Change of Morgan Tsvangirai, now prime minister in the coalition administration.

In his last interview published in Zimbabwe, he declared Mugabe 'a dictator.'

He also said he would not allow himself to be buried at Heroes' Acre, the official shrine outside Harare for guerilla war veterans, because it had become a burial ground for 'thieves and killers.'

Zanu-PF said it had not yet made a decision on his hero status.

'We have lost a gallant son of the soil who sacrificed a lot for the liberation of this country,' Zanu-PF secretary of administration Didymus Mutasa told state-run newspaper the Herald.

'It is too early for us to say much about his hero status because that will come from the Manicaland provincial leadership after consulting with his family,' he added. 'We will wait for what they will say and everything will be announced in due course.'