[10] The Times described Lardner-Burke as "responsible for the harassment, arrest and detention without trial of tens of thousands of black nationalists, including President Mugabe, fighting against white rule in the 1960s and 1970s.

[12] Lardner-Burke held his seat at the 1965 general election, and was one of the signatories to the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI), signed in Salisbury on 11 November.

He made the possession of "weapons of war" a mandatory capital offence, and to escape this punishment, those accused were expected to demonstrate that they did not intend to endanger life.

In the run-up to the 2008 Zimbabwean parliamentary election, the Movement for Democratic Change opposition to Mugabe noted that Lardner-Burke's name appeared on the electoral roll for the Mount Pleasant suburb of Harare.

They alleged that the presence of names such as Lardner-Burke's on the roll would permit Mugabe's ZANU-PF party to engage in electoral fraud by falsely claiming the support of dead people.