27 Facts About Joseph Msika

Joseph Msika attended Howard and Mt Selinda institutes, where he trained to become a carpentry teacher.

Joseph Msika then moved to Bulawayo, where he worked as a carpenter and ran a fish-and-chip shop.

Later, Joseph Msika was a teacher at Usher Institute and became active in nationalist politics, working with nationalists such as Masotsha Ndlovu and Benjamin Burombo.

Joseph Msika joined the Rhodesia Textile and Allied Workers' Union around 1944 or 1945.

Joseph Msika was elected as National Treasurer of the African National Congress in 1957; it was banned, at which point Joseph Msika became Secretary for Youth in the Zimbabwe African People's Union, its successor organisation.

Joseph Msika joined the National Democratic Party in 1961 and was elected a councillor.

In 1963, Joseph Msika was elected as ZAPU Secretary for Youth Affairs, and after the NDP was banned he became Secretary for External Affairs of the People's Caretaker Party.

In 1979, Joseph Msika was a member of the delegation to the Lancaster House Agreement that forged independence for Zimbabwe.

In 1980, Joseph Msika was included in the first post-independence government as Minister of Natural Resources and Water Development; he was one of three representatives of ZAPU in the Cabinet, along with Joshua Nkomo and George Silundika.

Joseph Msika was nominated to the Senate with backing from the Zimbabwe African National Union of Prime Minister Robert Mugabe.

Joseph Msika was dismissed from the government in 1982, when ZANU accused ZAPU of plotting to seize power.

Joseph Msika was Vice-President of ZAPU from 1984 to 1987, and he was elected to the House of Assembly in 1985 from Pelandaba constituency.

Joseph Msika served as Senior Minister of Local Government, Rural and Urban Development in the President's Office from 1988 to 1995, then as Minister without Portfolio from 1995 to 1999.

Joseph Msika served for a time as National Chairman of ZANU-PF from 1989 to 1999.

Joseph Msika was not a candidate in the June 2000 parliamentary election.

Joseph Msika was placed on the United States sanctions list in 2003 and remained there until his death.

On 5 March 2005, Joseph Msika was taken into hospital after collapsing at home, apparently having suffered a stroke and a blood clot in his head.

Joseph Msika did not run in the March 2005 parliamentary election, but Mugabe appointed him to one of the thirty unelected seats in the House of Assembly.

Joseph Msika did not run in the March 2008 parliamentary election, but was appointed to the Senate by Mugabe on 25 August 2008.

Joseph Msika was then sworn in again as Vice-President by Mugabe on 13 October 2008, together with Joyce Mujuru.

In January 2009, when Mugabe went on his customary annual leave, Joseph Msika became Acting President.

Joseph Msika became ill while attending a regional summit in June 2009, reportedly due to a stroke, and was treated at a South African hospital.

Joseph Msika subsequently died at the West End Hospital in Harare on 4 August 2009 due to hypertension; he had been hospitalised there for 46 days.

At the time of his death, Joseph Msika was the Second Secretary of ZANU-PF.

President Mugabe, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, and Deputy Prime Ministers Thokozani Khupe and Arthur Mutambara were all present for the funeral, at which Joseph Msika was buried with full military honours; various high-ranking regional officials, including South African Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, were present.

Joseph Msika said it was then that Nkomo became the leader of the black nationalist movement in Rhodesia.

Joseph Msika questioned Mugabe's past apology for the 1987 Gukurahundi killings, which was condemned internationally for the violence it unleashed on mainly rural Ndebele, at a rally in October 2006 in Bulawayo.