HARARE | Thursday
CHENJERAI Hitler Hunzvi, the militant leader of Zimbabwe’s liberation war veterans who died on Monday, has been declared a national hero by the ruling party.
The staunch ally of President Robert Mugabe will be buried on Friday at the North Korean-built Heroes’ Acre, a shrine traditionally reserved for prominent members of the country’s 1970s liberation war.
Hunzvi, who led a bloody campaign of invasions of white commercial farms which started last year, died of cerebral malaria at the age of 51.
Zimbabwe war veterans had on Tuesday threatened to boycott Hunzvi’s funeral if the government failed to award him the status of national hero.
Mugabe has publicly stated that Hunzvi was a champion of social justice in this southern African country, and saw him as a crusader helping blacks to overcome colonial imbalances in land ownership.
Although his former wife claimed Hunzvi never went near the battlefields to fight the guerrilla warfare, he led an association of some 50_000 veterans of the country’s war of independence.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has claimed that Mugabe and his party were selecting national heroes along partisan lines.
Meanwhile, Mugabe has dismissed widespread rumours that Hunzvi had died from an Aids related illness.
Health minister Timothy Stamps said the militant leader had died of cerebral malaria.
“Those are the lies making rounds, some are saying he had Aids, no it’s not true, Dr Stamps said that is not true,” Mugabe told mourners at Hunzvi’s funeral in the capital.
The president said Harare had turned into a rumour-mongering city, with Mugabe himself having been said to have died at least four times,
“Even Jesus died once and rose, but rumours say I have even surpassed him and have died and resurrected three or four times,” he said.
HIV/Aids afflict up to 25% of Zimbabwe’s adult population and kills an average 1_200 people per week. – AFP
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