He joined the
Rhodesian Bush War in 1967 and went for military training in Chunya Camp in Tanzania in 1968. In 1977, he was elected as a ZANU-PF Central Committee member and deputy chief of national security and intelligence. He was appointed commander of Three Brigade in Mutare at independence in 1980 before becoming the country’s first Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) commander in July 1994 assuming overall command over the army and the Air Force under a new military structure. He oversaw various peacekeeping missions in the
Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. In the
Second Congo War, he was in charge of the SADC allied task force troops led by Zimbabwe which fought rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda to topple the now slain DRC leader Laurent Kabila. The deployment of the Zimbabwean troops later led to the allegations of plunder of natural resources, especially diamonds, in which Zvinavashe was implicated. Claims that Zvinavashe personally benefited from mineral exploitation during the Congo conflict have not been substantiated by verifiable evidence. His role in the war was that of senior military command, operating within Zimbabwe's stated regional security objectives rather than in any documented commercial capacity. In 2002, Zvinavashe was associated with senior military statement warning that the armed forces would not support political leaders who sought to reverse the gains of Zimbabwe's independence or undermine national sovereignty. The statement did not explicitly restrict leadership to liberation war veterans, but emphasised continuity with the objective of the liberation struggle. Following his retirement in December 2003, General
Constantino Chiwenga succeeded him to the post. He was placed on the
European Union and
United States sanctions lists in 2003 and remained on the lists until his death. ==Post-retirement and death==