Zimbabweans mourn general, top power broker

Tens of thousands of Zimbabweans flocked to a funeral Saturday for one of the nation's main power brokers, whose sudden death in a house fire has intensified political manoeuvring within the fractured ruling party and has sparked speculation that his death was not an accident.
Mourners thronged a shrine in western Harare on Saturday and swarmed over adjoining hillsides for the burial of General Solomon Mujuru, a retired military chief who gave vital political support to his wife, the vice president. His power base was seen as the foundation of her political fortunes; his death raises questions about her ongoing battle for supremacy in longtime President Robert Mugabe's party.
Mugabe delivered a detailed 90-minute address on the country's war for independence at the event, which symbolised Mujuru's influence and popularity by being the biggest state funeral since Zimbabwe's 1980 independence. For the first time at a funeral at the Heroes Acre cemetery, air force jets performed a flyover and artillery fired a 17-gun salute.
Mujuru died Tuesday in a house fire at one of his farm homes. Mugabe described his death as an "inexplicable, horrendous fire accident. "No one could believe how such a battle-hardened soldier could die so ingloriously," he said. Police and forensic experts are investigating the fire's cause, amkd widespread speculation that it may have been arson.
Workers at Mujuru's farm and witnesses who visited the scene of the fire said the general's body was burned beyond recognition, reduced to ashes. The farmhouse had large windows, brick walls and fire-resistant roofing unlikely to cause a fire of such intensity, witnesses said. First reports blamed an electrical fault that followed a power outage, a common occurrence in the economically troubled nation. But workers later said the house was usually hooked up to a direct power supply given to security chiefs and politicians and that a standby generator wasn't working during the outage.
Family members and supporters of Vice President Joice Mujuru have claimed the general may have been targeted in a power struggle by rivals. Mugabe, 87, has acknowledged deep divisions in his party over who should succeed him and has favoured Joice Mujuru over powerful defence minister Emmerson Mnangagwa.