Written by Angella Semu
Zimbabwe’s agriculture minister Perrance Shiri has died at 65 from complications associated with the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa confirmed about the Minister’s demise on Wednesday in a statement.
Report by Reuters indicated that the retired general who helped plot the ouster of Robert Mugabe in a 2017 coup was admitted to hospital on Tuesday and died in the early hours of Wednesday.
Shiri commanded the air force for 25 years before he joined the government in 2017 taking up a post as land and agriculture minister under Mnangagwa.
He led the elite North-Korean trained unit, the Fifth Brigade, that cracked down on a revolt in the western province of Matabeleland province Known as the Gukurahundi Massacre the bloodbath that claimed some 20,000 lives in the newly-independent Zimbabwe.
He had been quarantined at a private hospital after he was said to have been exposed to coronavirus virus by his driver who succumb to it.
Meanwhile, Zimbabwe has about 2,817 confirmed cases of the coronavirus with 40 recorded fatalities.
