Zimbabwe general linked to coup 'murdered'

By Daniel Howden
Published: 28 June 2007

One of Zimbabwe's top soldiers has been murdered after being linked to an alleged coup plot, according to senior military sources. Brig-Gen Ambrose Paul Gunda was buried yesterday a week after reports of a plot to topple President Robert Mugabe caused fevered speculation in the capital, Harare.

Official reports say the brigadier, a former head of the presidential guard, was killed last Thursday after the car he was driving collided with a goods train outside Harare. However, military sources speaking on condition of anonymity, claim he had been killed earlier by Mr Mugabe's own agents, and his body was then placed in a car on the train track to make it appear an accident. Brig-Gen Gunda had been under house arrest prior to the killing and no post-mortem examination was conducted on the body, said one of his junior officers who has been in hiding since the killing. Despite the alleged murder, Brig-Gen Gunda was buried at Harare's Heroes' Cemetery yesterday. A number of people who have died in suspicious circumstances after falling foul of the Mugabe regime have been given hero's burials at the site.

Last Friday, a judge in Harare ordered a bail hearing for five suspects in an alleged coup to be held behind closed doors. Brig-Gen Gunda was not among the suspects. The five men were not named and the presiding judge said the secrecy was necessary in order "to protect certain names which have been mentioned in the case".

Initial reports that one of the most senior members of the ruling Zanu PF party, the former general Solomon Mujuru, had been placed under house arrest, sparked rumours of the coup earlier this month. That was followed by a number of arrests including one former army officer and a reported link to another senior Zanu leader, Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Both Mr Mnangagwa and Mr Mujuru have significant support in the ruling party and have been talked about as possible successors to the 83-year-old Mr Mugabe.

The Mugabe regime announced this week that it would nationalise remaining foreign-owned interests in the country and deployed the police and army to enforce unrealistic price controls on shopkeepers. Zimbabwe is in the grip of a hyperinflation crisis which has seen prices double in a day. Current estimates of the inflation rate differ sharply from the conservative 4,000 per cent to more than 10,000 per cent. The next highest inflation rate in the world is in the junta-ruled Burma, at 40 per cent.

Speaking at the burial of Brig-Gen Gunda yesterday, Mr Mugabe railed against a number of forces he blamed for the present parlous situation, saying miners had been drafted into a "regime-change" agenda by Britain, deliberately reducing production, raising prices and illegally banking foreign currency abroad. "We will seize the mines... we will nationalise them if they continue with the dirty tricks," said an angry Mr Mugabe.

The economic analyst Tony Hawkins said the government was employing a political ploy to distract people from the economic crisis. "I suppose the logic behind this thinking is because in 2000 the land invasions won them an election, company seizures could do the same in 2008," he said.

Britain's Foreign Office minister Lord Triesman told the House of Lords yesterday: "Many people are saying that the inflation level will be from 10,000 per cent to 11,000 per cent at the end of the year. No economy in the world has ever recovered, through its own internal volition, from such a crisis... The rest of the world is going to have to pick that country up."