Zimbabwe: Politician killed in car crash A FORMER ZANU-PF minister, who revealed that millions of dollars of diamond taxes had gone missing in Zimbabwe, has died in a road accident, police said yesterday. Edward Chindori-Chininga, a former mines minister in president Robert Mugabe's party, died on the spot when his car rammed into a tree in Raffingora, about 93 miles north of Harare, on Wednesday, police spokesperson Ephraim Nyakata told state radio. The report said his car had "failed to stop at the T-junction of Raffingora and Mvurwi roads." The accident occurred in Chindori-Chininga's own Guruve constituency - and immediately sparked speculation that he had been murdered. Chindori-Chininga, 58, had fallen out of favour with hardliners in Mugabe's party over claims he leaked documents to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, which is part of Zimbabwe's coalition government. He chaired a cross-party parliamentary portfolio committee that only last week reported that millions of dollars of royalties paid by firms mining in the eastern Marange diamond fields had disappeared. The committee found that while one diamond mining company Mbada - which is linked to Mugabe's wife Grace - claimed to have remitted £187 million in taxes in the last four years, the government said it only received £52m from the company in 2011 and 2012. Three other companies operating in Marange refused to disclose how much they had paid. Chindori-Chininga's committee said: "The diamond industry is operating without a clear legal framework and administration to provide assurance that the people's resources are being protected." Mugabe's military wrested control of the rich Marange deposits from small-scale panners and miners in a bloody operation in late 2008 that left at least 200 dead. Current mines minister Obert Mpofu has single-handedly picked the companies permitted to mine there: all have links to ZANU-PF. The MDC believes Mugabe's party has diverted the diamond money to fund the 89-year-old president's campaign for re-election against MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai in July or August. Several officials who have fallen foul of a powerful ZANU-PF clique have died in car accidents in the past 12 years, including former defence and youth ministers Moven Mahachi and Border Gezi in 2001 and ZANU-PF political commissar Elliot Manyika in 2008. Army commander Solomon Mujuru was killed in a house fire in 2011: his wife vice- president Joice Mujuru still believes he was assassinated. Ominously, the former mines minister's death was recently predicted by a disenchanted ZANU-PF insider calling himself Baba Jukwa, whose Facebook page has more than 160,000 likes and whose postings attract more readers these days than Zimbabwe's best-selling private daily newspaper, according to media experts. Baba Jukwa - the alias means Daddy Ancestral Spirit - often posts detailed accounts of top-level ZANU-PF discussions. The Facebook posters real identity remains unknown - despite alleged attempts by Mugabe officials to unmask him. Yesterday Baba Jukwa wrote: "I wonder why he didn't listen when I was all along warning him of impending danger... Chininga wanted transparency and he is taken out."