Simon Muzenda, 80; Zimbabwe Vice President Since 1987

Zimbabwe Vice President Simon Muzenda, 80, longtime loyal aide to autocratic leader Robert Mugabe, died Saturday in a Harare hospital of unspecified causes. He had been frail for the last year with coronary problems and rarely handled his duties as the senior of two Zimbabwe vice presidents.

A native of the Gutu district of southern Zimbabwe when the nation was still called Rhodesia, Simon Vengayi Muzenda was educated at a church mission school and studied carpentry in neighboring South Africa. He was one of the least-educated politicians in the ruling elite and had been given his high office, with its attendant status and wealth, because of his loyalty to Mugabe.

Muzenda spent much of 1962 to 1972 in prison or under colonial restriction for his political activism against colonial rule. He fled into neighboring Zambia and then to Mozambique, joining Mugabe in reorganizing the ZANU-PF party and its guerrilla war against the white government of Rhodesia. After independence, Mugabe as prime minister named Muzenda deputy prime minister and foreign minister.

When Mugabe became executive president in 1987, he named Muzenda his first vice president. Zimbabwe is in the middle of its worst economic and political crisis since independence from Britain in 1980. Mugabe has been under pressure to step down and was not expected to name a successor to Muzenda quickly.