JOSHUA NKOMO African nationalist and former guerrilla leader

"All I'm trying to do is not join my ancestral spirits just yet."

Vice President Joshua Nkomo, the father of Zimbabwe's fight for independence from white colonial rule, died July 1. He was 82 and had been fighting prostate cancer since 1996.

Nkomo was regarded by many as the guiding light of the nation's black nationalist movement, which fought white colonial rule for nearly three decades in the former British colony of Rhodesia.

But the traditional leader of the minority Ndebele people never achieved his burning ambition of becoming the first black leader when Rhodesia became independent Zimbabwe in 1980 after a bitter guerrilla war.