HARARE – Former Hurungwe East MP Sarah Mahoka has been killed in a car crash, friends said on Thursday.
Mahoka, who was in her 50s, died on admission at Karoi Hospital after a vehicle she was travelling in was involved in a head-on collision near the Mashonaland West town at around 8.30PM.
“Their vehicle collided head-on with a haulage truck very close to their home in an area called Buffalo Downs, which is 195km from Harare,” Zanu PF’s former chairman for Mashonaland West Temba Mliswa told ZimLive.
“Her husband, her son and their driver are also in hospital but they all should fully recover.”
Mahoka reportedly spent the day in Mhondoro learning how to grow industrial hemp with other farmers.
Mliswa described the former Mashonaland West Zanu PF Women’s League chairperson as a “bulldozer, hard worker and great politician.”
“It’s very unfortunate that she won’t be recognised for her sterling work, standing for women, because of internal differences in Zanu PF. She deserves to be a provincial hero but alas, due to internal frictions she won’t be so recognised,” Mliswa said.
Mahoka was a rising star in Zanu PF but her political career was brought to a screeching halt in 2017 when the military staged a coup that ousted former President Robert Mugabe.
As a staunch ally of the former first lady Grace Mugabe, Mahoka was expelled from Zanu PF along with over a dozen other Mugabe loyalists, some of whom fled into exile.
Former Zanu PF political commissar Saviour Kasukuwere described Mahoka as “tough, honest, unflinching and a battle-hardened grassroots politician,” adding that he had been left “shaken” by her death.
Mahoka tried to make a political comeback in 2018 as a candidate for the National Patriotic Front, formed by Mugabe’s former loyalists, but lost in Hurungwe East.
In August 2020, police said they had arrested MDC Alliance deputy chairman Job Sikhala hiding in her house in Tynwald. Sikhala was wanted on sedition charges.
