Political Accidents in Zimbabwe

Abstract

On 16 August 2011 Zimbabwe awoke to the news that retired General Solomon Mujuru, aka Rex Nhongo (his war alias), the former deputy commander of ZANLA (Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army) and independent Zimbabwe’s first black army commander, husband of the (then) vice-president, Joice Mujuru, longterm confidante of (then) president Robert Mugabe, and widely regarded as ‘kingmaker’ with the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF), had died in a mysterious fire at his farm in Beatrice, 60 km south west of Harare. Just four days later, on 20 August, amid public statements of grief from across the political spectrum, and growing speculation about the cause of his death, Mujuru’s remains were buried at the National Heroes Acre in Harare at a huge state funeral attended by tens of thousands of people. After the ‘inexplicable, horrendous fire accident’ – as Mugabe then described it1 – there was only a ‘small pile of charred bones and ash’ to be buried, and workers reportedly needed ‘shovels to scrape his remains off the floor’.2 ‘Burnt beyond recognition’, unconfirmed reports suggested dental records were needed to confirm his identity;3 and (unusually for state funerals in Zimbabwe) the ‘coffin remained sealed’.4 Nevertheless, the closed casket did little to contain the plethora of rumours that emerged in the months that followed, which remain unresolved, despite police investigations and an official inquest. In this article, I use Mujuru’s death as way into discussing ‘political accidents’ in Zimbabwe’s recent history, in order to explore the efficacies of rumours and the politics of uncertainty in relation to what I tentatively term the unfinished nature of death in Zimbabwe. Mujuru’s death is useful because the controversies that surrounded it, and the official inquest that followed, which continue to be the subject of great speculation both in print and on social media,5 turn not only on the inconsistencies of different witness accounts, and the woeful incompetence of the police and fire brigade’s response to the fire, but also on their failure to secure forensic evidence properly, the contested role of the state-appointed pathologist, the unresolved mysteries of the