1. Edgar Tekere was the second and last Secretary General of the Zimbabwe African National Union who organised the party during the Lancaster House talks and served in government before his popularity as a potential rival to Robert Mugabe caused their estrangement.
Edgar Tekere was detained by the Rhodesian government at Gonakudzingwa.
Edgar Zivanai "2-Boy" Tekere was an early ally of Robert Mugabe within the Zimbabwe African National Union during the fight for independence and against the Rhodesian Front government of Ian Smith.
Edgar Tekere was elected by a democratic process to be the first ZANU-PF Secretary-General following Zimbabwe's independence.
Edgar Tekere being the ZANU-PF Secretary General, personally invited Bob Marley to perform at Rufaro Stadium, for the official Zimbabwean Independence Celebration.
Edgar Tekere stayed with Edgar Tekere during this tour date.
When ZANU won the 1980 elections, Edgar Tekere was appointed as Minister of Manpower Planning in Mugabe's Cabinet.
Edgar Tekere followed his appointment by making a series of outspoken speeches that went far beyond government policy.
Edgar Tekere retained his government post when he went on trial, in November 1980, together with seven bodyguards who were all former guerrilla fighters in the independence war.
Edgar Tekere was represented by Louis Blom-Cooper QC, a flamboyant English counsel, and there were many confrontations between him and the presiding judge.
The court was unanimous that Edgar Tekere was guilty of murder.
The assessors found that Edgar Tekere presented with a personality and mindset which was completely consistent with an unreasonable but genuinely held belief that he was acting in the interest of state security with the confrontation between one of his men and the farmer, in which the latter was killed, an unfortunate consequence of the security sweep which Edgar Tekere genuinely believed needed to be conducted.
Edgar Tekere was dismissed from the government on 10 January 1981, a decision he was reported to be happy with; he retained the Secretary-Generalship of ZANU.
Edgar Tekere supported Mugabe at the 1985 elections but by October 1988 his consistent criticism of corruption resulted in his expulsion from the party.
Edgar Tekere ran against Robert Mugabe in the 1990 Presidential race as the candidate of the Zimbabwe Unity Movement, offering a broadly free market platform against Mugabe's communist-style economic planning.
Edgar Tekere received unprecedented support for his opposition to Mugabe which led to massive election rigging by ZANU in order for Mugabe to win the election on 1 April 1990 receiving 2,026,976 votes while Tekere only got 413,840.
Edgar Tekere dropped out of sight after the election, which fuelled rumours that he had been planted as an opposition figure.
At a rally on 2 March 2008 in Highfield, a suburb of Harare, Edgar Tekere endorsed Simba Makoni, an independent candidate who was running against Mugabe in the March 2008 presidential election.
Edgar Tekere said that he was "appointing [him]self principal campaigner for Mugabe's downfall".
On Sunday, 16 August 2009, at Sakubva Stadium in Mutare in Manicaland, Edgar Tekere was the guest of honour for the Movement for Democratic Change in front of a crowd of 40,000 people that gathered to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the founding of the MDC, led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.
Edgar Tekere died noon on Tuesday 7 June 2011, at Murambi Clinic, in Mutare, Manicaland.
Edgar 2-Boy Tekere was unanimously declared a national hero by the ZANU-PF Politburo.