BULAWAYO – Former cabinet minister and Zanu PF politburo member Simon Khaya Moyo has died.
He was 76.
The former diplomat succumbed to cancer in Bulawayo on Sunday, a family friend told ZimLive.
Moyo, who has undergone treatment in India and South Africa in recent years, missed a Zanu PF politburo meeting two weeks ago as his health deteriorated.
On November 6, 2017, Khaya Moyo – who was information minister – read a statement announcing that then President Robert Mugabe had fired his deputy, Emmerson Mnangagwa, for “disloyalty, disrespect, deceitfulness and unreliability” as well as “demonstrating little probity in the execution of his duties.”
Mnangagwa fled into exile in South Africa shortly after, but a military coup that same month ousted Mugabe and his former deputy would return to be president. Khaya Moyo lost his ministerial portfolio, but was retained in the Zanu PF politburo.
Born on October 1, 1945, in Plumtree, Khaya Moyo was a special assistant to Joshua Nkomo in the mid-to-late 1970s leading up to independence in 1980.
He served in several ministerial portfolios, and also had a spell as Zimbabwe’s ambassador to South Africa.
