HARARE – Former education and culture minister Aeneas Chigwedere died from Covid-19 complications on Friday aged 81, his family confirmed.

The Zanu PF party also announced the passing of former Chitungwiza South and Zengeza Member of Parliament Christopher Chigumba from the deadly respiratory illness.

Chigumba, a long-serving vice-chairperson for the ruling party in Harare province, died at a hospital in the capital Thursday.

The death of the two Zanu PF stalwarts come amid reports several ruling party officials are down with coronavirus, which has killed 917 people in Zimbabwe, including three cabinet ministers.

Foreign affairs minister Sibusiso Moyo became the latest domino to fall this week after his counterpart Ellen Gwaradzimba, who oversaw Manicaland province, and agriculture minister Perrence Shiri – the first minister to die.

Gwaradzimba was buried at the National Heroes Acre on Thursday together with another hero Morton Malianga, while Moyo, who has also been accorded the national hero status, is awaiting interment.

To date, Zimbabwe has recorded 30,047 Covid-19 cases, including 19,569 recoveries. On Thursday 639 new infections and 38 fatalities were reported as the virus continues to spread rapidly.

A historian, Chigwedere served as education minister from 2001 through 2008, when he was appointed resident minister for Mashonaland East by the late president Robert Mugabe.

Chigwedere was born in Hwedza to an educationist father and a communal farmer mother. He attained his education at Chigwederere School, Chemhanza, Waddilove, and Goromonzi High Schools.

He would later become the first black student to be admitted to study for a History Honors program at the University of London, from which he graduated in 1964.

Chigwedere embarked on studying the Chimurenga struggle, the 1896–97 anticolonial war in 1966 towards a Master of Philosophy degree.

In his writings, he pushed the narrative of a coordinated struggle for independence by black people, contradicting colonial historians who had presented the effort as disjointed.

But some accuse Chigwedere and other local historians of distorting the past by diminishing the role played by Zipra forces in the independence struggle while overstating Zanla’s dominance.

He also attracted controversy as minister after suggesting a national uniform for all students and proposing to rename schools that still with colonial names.

Chigwedere once endorsed a primary school headmaster’s decision to expel a seven-year-old Rastafarian boy because of his dreadlocks, arguing the hairstyle violated the schools’ dress code.

The decision was overturned by the Supreme Court.