ZANU-PF was plunged into mourning on Saturday following the death in a car accident of a stalwart credited with reviving its electoral fortunes. State radio, quoting police, said Employment Creation Minister Border Gezi had been killed on Saturday morning in a car accident along Masvingo road.

Gezi’s Mercedes-Benz burst a tyre, resulting in the driver losing control. The vehicle then rolled once and veered off along Masvingo Road on Saturday morning. He was pronounced dead on arrival at Mater Dei Hospital in Bulawayo.

President Robert Mugabe appointed him into cabinet after last year’s troubled parliamentary elections in June, and later to the powerful position of secretary for the commissariat in the policy-making Politburo of the ruling party.

He used both positions to extensively restructure ZANU-PF, and campaign to win back supporters who had defected to the main opposition MDC throughout the country. Gezi was credited with reviving the flagging electoral fortunes of Mugabe’s party, which only narrowly won last year’s parliamentary elections, as it prepares to face the MDC in presidential polls next year.

The two parties are likely to be locked up in gruelling campaigning for several parliamentary seats whose results the High Court nullified this week on grounds the ruling party used violence and intimidation to win. Gezi was instrumental in winning back two parliamentary bye-elections at the end of last year and this year through his effective campaigning.