Chenjerai Hunzvi - Early Life

Early Life

Hunzvi was born in Chiminya, a village in the Mashonaland province of Zimbabwe. He said that he joined the struggle against white minority rule in Rhodesia at the age of 16 taking the nom-de-guerre of "Hitler". He reported to have been interned in Gonakudzingwa and Wha Wha prisons between 1967 and 1970, and to have been a prominent leader in Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) and Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA), though these claims have been denied by other respected elders of the campaigns. He left the country and having been identified as being bright, was sent to study in Romania, becoming fluent in Romanian and French, and subsequently began medical studies in Poland where he married a Polish woman named Wiesława Hunzvi, with whom he had two children. He represented ZAPU while in Poland, and in 1979, during his medical studies, Hunzvi visited London to attend the ceasefire and constitutional negotiations for the Lancaster House Agreement.

Hunzvi returned to Zimbabwe in 1990, working initially at Harare Central Hospital, and later founding a medical practice in Budiriro, in the township of Harare. Wiesława Hunzvi fled Zimbabwe in 1992 to escape violence from her husband. She described Hunzvi as a "cruel and vile man who took delight in beating me. And as for the war, he never fired a shot. He saw no action at all." He subsequently remarried and has two other children.