Zimbabwe’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Sibusiso Moyo died of COVID-19, the government spokesman George Charamba announced on Wednesday, reported Africa News.
He “succumbed to COVID-19 at a local hospital” on Wednesday, Charamba said in a statement.
The 61-year-old Moyo came to the limelight in 2017 as the military general who announced the coup against then-President Robert Mugabe on television. He announced the military had kept Mugabe under house arrest as armored vehicles rolled into the capital, Harare.
The coup ended Mugabe’s 37 years of long rule in Zimbabwe. Mugabe breathed his last in September 2019.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who came to power with military backing, appointed Moyo as the country’s foreign affairs minister.
Moyo is the third minister to succumb to the consequences of the coronavirus in the country. Last week, another Cabinet minister, Ellen Gwaradzimba, died from COVID-19.
Zimbabwe, like many other African countries, initially recorded very few COVID-19 cases. But, now, the country is currently experiencing a resurgence of the coronavirus, with record numbers of daily confirmed cases and deaths.
It is feared that a new, more infectious variant of the virus, which was recently detected in South Africa, has spread in the country as thousands of Zimbabweans living in South Africa returned home for the holiday season.
The government said it is in the process of conducting genetic sequencing to confirm the presence of the variant.
Zimbabwe has reported 29,408 cases and 879 deaths so far, according to government figures. The Zimbabwean Association of Doctors for Human Rights (ZADHR) has warned the country’s hospitals are unable to deal with an increased demand for admissions.
The Southern African country is yet to receive any vaccine for the coronavirus. The government said it expects to get some vaccines through the World Health Organization-led COVAX initiative, but it does not have a firm date on when they will be delivered.
