BULAWAYO – A memorial service for the late national hero Dumiso Dabengwa will be held in Bulawayo on Friday, ahead of his burial in Ntabazinduna on Saturday.

Bulawayo residents will get an opportunity to pay their final respects to the liberation war hero at White City Stadium between 10 and 1PM, the Dumiso Dabengwa Foundation said.

Dabengwa’s body will lie in state in Ntabazinduna on Friday night.

The 79-year-old died in Kenya on May 23 while returning to Zimbabwe following treatment for a liver ailment in India.

A condolence book has been opened at the Dabengwa family home in Bulawayo’s Fourwinds suburb.

Zanu PF spokesman Simon Khaya Moyo said after signing the book: “He was one of the greatest revolutionaries, very principled, very focused, a man of purpose, a man of destiny. He never had time for gossip; neither did he believe in any existence of a tribe and region or race. To him humanity was supreme. He was a man who was very humble but very deep in thinking. A mentor to many revolutionaries and freedom fighters.

“If it wasn’t for the role he played during the liberation struggle as our intelligence supremo, we would have gone into a number of disasters because of the viciousness of the enemy.”

Dabengwa, as head of ZAPU’s armed wing, ZIPRA, had a feared reputation among the white minority of Zimbabwe, which earned him the sobriquet “the Black Russian,” because of his close ties to the Soviet Union, where he underwent training by the K.G.B. in the 1960s.

When the seven-year bush war ended shortly before independence in 1980, he played a persuasive role in trying to unite the rival guerrilla armies that had fought white minority rule: his own Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army, or ZIPRA, which was loyal to Joshua Nkomo, and the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army, or ZANLA, whose political leader was Robert Mugabe.

Three years into independence, Dabengwa and ZIPRA commander, Lt. Gen. Lookout Masuku, were tried on treason charges after the discovery of what the authorities said was an arms cache. Dabengwa was also charged with seeking to maintain close ties to the K.G.B.

When he and General Masuku were acquitted, they were immediately rearrested under emergency powers dating to the era of white minority rule.

General Masuku died in 1986 shortly after his transfer to a hospital from prison, and Dabengwa was freed under an uneven unity agreement between Mugabe and Nkomo in 1987.

Dabengwa went on to serve as home affairs minister from 1992 to 2000. But in 2008, he withdrew from the unity pact to revive ZAPU, the party that was once led by Nkomo.