Profile: Chenjerai 'Hitler' Hunzvi

Chenjerai "Hitler" Hunzvi

Zimbabwe war veterans' leader

*Born into a peasant family, around 1949

*First name means "beware" in Shona language; said to have christened himself "Hitler" during liberation war against white rule

ALSO Zimbabwe war veteran leader dies

*Official biography says he was the country's youngest political prisoner in 1966, when he was held at Gweru, in central Zimbabwe

*Studied medicine in Warsaw, where he met and married his Polish wife, Wieslawa Hunzvi, from whom he was estranged at the time of his death at age 51 in June 2001

*Shot to prominence in 1997 when his National Liberation War Veterans' Association -- comprised of former combatants from the country's 1970s war against white rule -- threatened street protests unless President Robert Mugabe granted the vets gratuities and pensions

*Mugabe relented, doling out war pensions of $100 a month, along with a one-off sum of $2,500 to each of the estimated 50,000 vets; Mugabe praised Hunzvi for militating on behalf of what both men saw as the rightful owners of the nation's economic assets: disenfranchised war veterans

*Masterminded the often violent occupation of 1,700 white-owned farms in run-up to last year's parliamentary elections, providing key support to Mugabe's ZANU-PF party. Accused farmers on seized land of supporting opposition

*With Mugabe's apparent support, extended land seizures in recent months to encompass about 200 factories and predominantly white-owned businesses, where extortionist tactics were used to wrest payments from employers

*Characterised raids as attempts to mediate labour disputes, asserting they were in retaliation for unfair dismissals

*Acquitted earlier this year by a Harare court of charges that he had defrauded a compensation fund for war victims by forging medical records in 1995 to claim payments for himself

*Estranged wife claimed Hunzvi, despite his self-depiction as a war hero, "never picked up a gun"; she told a South African newspaper she had to flee Zimbabwe in 1992 to escape his violence

*Likened himself to other rabble-rousing revolutionary heroes, such as Che Guevara and Napoleon Bonaparte

*Reportedly justified violence perpetrated in land seizures from white-owned farms by saying, "all revolutions require violence"; warned on eve of last year's elections that there would be a "Chimurenga," or War of Independence, unless Mugabe's party won the elections