Dead Midzi a coward, says Mugabe

President Robert Mugabe has been criticised for calling the late former Mines minister Amos Midzi a coward after indications that he committed suicide.

Mugabe told Zanu-PF youths at a Youth National Assembly in Harare on Saturday that Midzi had failed to progress in his political career, a charge that has angered associates of the party's former Harare chairman.

Mugabe told the youths: "But you don't improve yourself by hanging yourself and you don't go to heaven by hanging. Don't spill your own blood."