“He has left a legacy. He was one of the senior people in politics who had the voice of reason,” Tsvangirai told mourners at the veteran politician’s home in Harare.
Msika, a nationalist leader and arguably the most senior PF ZAPU party member that merged with President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF in 1987, was one of the previous government’s moderate politicians who clashed with his counterparts especially at the height of the land invasions.
Msika was among a few senior ZANU PF officials to speak openly against the often violent seizure of white-owned farms for redistribution to landless blacks which started in 2000 and have reduced Zimbabwe from a breadbasket to a basket case.
He however appeared on numerous times on state television using vernacular vulgar language to undress white commercial farmers and on one occassion he labelled the country's opposition party and its supporters as "imigodoyi" literally explained as skinny smelling dogs that cannot fend for themselves.
Nonetheles, Tsvangirai said he had a cordial relationship with Msika – whom he described as a father because they shared the same totem – since the formation of an inclusive government with Msika’s ZANUPF last February, offering the country its best opportunity in a decade to wriggle out of economic and political crisis.
Tendai Biti the Minister of Finance and the Secretary General for the opposition MDC has said the late vice president was a man of valour whose “untainted by corruption” and “his name stayed away from scandal."
But Tsvangirai’s MDC party accuses Mugabe of flouting last year’s power-sharing agreement that gave birth to the new administration as shown by the veteran leader’s refusal to rescind his unilateral appointment of two of his alleged cronies to the key posts of central bank governor and attorney general.
The MDC also accuses hardliner members of Mugabe’s inner circle of ordering the police – who they still control – to arrest the former opposition party’s members of parliament on trumped up charges in a bid to whittle down the party’s slim parliamentary majority.
At least five MDC members either have been convicted in recent weeks or face various charges and risk losing their parliamentary seats if committed to jail for six months or more.
The 86-year-old Msika, who was one of two vice presidents of Zimbabwe and ZANU PF, died at a private clinic in the capital after being in and out of hospital since 2005.
In a statement issued yesterday by its secretary general Tendai Biti, the MDC expressed shock at Msika’s death, saying the country had “lost a true revolutionary and a selfless leader who spent more than half his life fighting for the liberation of our country”.
“He has died in the phase of hope for the country he dearly loved; hope emanating from the formation of an inclusive government which has given Zimbabweans an opportunity for national healing and reconciliation,” the MDC said.
“That he has died a week before Heroes’ Day is enough testimony that he was a true hero unto himself; a man of valour who lost precious decades in foreign lands and in the forests so that justice would visit the land of his birth.
“The only befitting tribute we can pay to Hon Msika is when we create a truly just and free society where Zimbabweans of all political shades live side by side without fear; a Zimbabwe where we all feel we live in one country which gives us pride and which must create hope and a better future for all,” the party said.
Meanwhile Tsvangirai was warmly received at the late Vice President’s Mandara home, where he was welcomed by ZANU PF ministers John Nkomo (National Healing and Reconciliation), Walter Mzembi (Tourism) and Florah Bhuka, Minister of State in the late vice president’s office.
One of Msika’s sons who addressed mourners said: “We are lucky that our father was vice president and now our brother is prime minister.”
– ZimOnline and Simba Nembaware