Speculation over death of soldier linked to coup plot

By Lance Guma
28 June 2007

The death of Brigadier General Ambrose Paul Gunda, a former head of Mugabe’s presidential guard, has ignited a wildfire of speculation over his reported links to an alleged coup plot to overthrow Mugabe. Official reports say General Gunda died last week Thursday when his car collided with a goods train outside Harare. He was buried at Heroes Acre.

The UK Independent newspaper however quotes military sources claiming he had been killed earlier by Mugabe’s security agents and then placed in a car on the train track to make it look like an accident. A junior officer who spoke to the paper claims General Gunda had been under house arrest prior to his death and that no post-mortem of his body was conducted. Other reports are saying the driver of the train has not been identified and pointing to a cover up.

Newsreel spoke to a former army colonel who is a close relative of General Gunda and he disputed the sequence of events reported by the newspaper. He says Gunda had just dropped his child at Watershed School near Marondera suggesting he was alive at the time of the accident. Many other parents had also gone to the school as it was Parents Day and this would not have been an ideal time or place to plot an assassination since the road was busy that day. ‘If they had wanted to kill him they could have used his official service diary to find out where he was going but this was a personal matter and unlikely that they knew he was going to Watershed School,’ the relative told us.

The coup plot story itself has been severely eroded in terms of its credibility. More and more reports indicate that the 6 men being held for allegedly trying to topple Mugabe are just victims of a ploy by Mugabe to flush out his enemies and any plans they might have of removing him. Despite key figures like Emmerson Mnangagwa and former army general Solomon Mujuru being implicated they have not been arrested or brought to court. Mnangagwa has called the coup plot allegations ‘stupid’.

The speculation over Gunda’s death however hits at the heart of the Zimbabwean view of how Mugabe deals with opponents. He has faced serious allegations of eliminating his opponents stretching back to the liberation struggle. Nationalists like Josiah Tongogara, Herbert Chitepo and others have all had their deaths linked to him. General Gunda’s accident last week now joins that long list of deaths that have been considered all too convenient for Mugabe.