HE Joseph Msika

Vice-President

Date of Birth: 06/12/1923
Place of Birth: Mazoe District, north of Harare

Born in Mazoe District, north of Harare, Msika lived briefly in South Africa before returning to Bulawayo where, in the mid-1950s, he became Treasurer of Joshua Nkomo’s newly formed African National Congress. He spent much of the next two decades in and out of detention with his leader. When Nkomo died in 1999, Msika stepped into his post of Vice-President.

Msika has been at the centre of nationalist politics for over half a century and his life story runs parallel to Zimbabwe’s liberation movement; he joined it a decade earlier than Robert Mugabe.     

For Nkomo, Msika represented the Mashonaland wing of the Patriotic Front while for Mugabe, he served as the Matebeleland presence in ZANU-PF. In fact, his family came from the Musikavanhu Ndau chieftainship in southern Manicaland. His role has always been that of a conciliator and he has never been linked to the party’s competing corrupt networks.

Joseph Msika, 86, is pleading to retire from the vice-presidency on the grounds of age and infirmity but President Robert Mugabe is reluctant to let him go because of the problems it would create in the hierarchy of his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front.

Mugabe strictly observes the terms the 1987 Unity Accord, under which ZANU and the PF each have two members in the four-man praesidium (at present Mugabe and Vice-President Joyce Mujuru for ZANU and Msika and party Chairman John Nkomo for the PF tradition). Nkomo is not interested in the vice-presidency and the next most obvious candidate would be the hefty and ponderous Obert Mpofu, the current Minister of Mines. Mpofu, however, backs Joyce Mujuru for the presidency against Mugabe’s favourite, Emmerson Mnangagwa.