HARARE – Zimbabwe army commander died of cancer early on Thursday, the presidential spokesman said.
The army holds an outsized influence in Zimbabwean politics. In November 2017, the army stepped in to oust the late Robert Mugabe and pave way for incumbent President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
Lieutenant General Edzayi Chimonyo, who was appointed to the position after the coup, had been battling cancer, George Charamba, the presidential spokesman wrote on Twitter.
Chimonyo, like all the current crop of military generals in Zimbabwe, is a former fighter in the country’s 1970s war of independence.
The opposition often accuses the army of openly siding with the ruling party in violation of the constitution.
Chimonyo was a commander of the Fifth Brigade, which is accused of killing more than 20,000 mostly civilians in Matabeleland and Midlands provinces in the 1980s.
While he was being mourned in official circles, victims of the massacres and human rights activists were voicing concerns online and off that the masterminds of the massacres – characterized by some as genocide – are all dying out without atoning for their crimes.
