The architect of Zimbabwe's liberation.

Born into a peasant family in Watsomba, Nyanga district, in 1923 and orphaned young, Herbert Chitepo rose through St David's Bonda, St Augustine's Penhalonga, Adams College and Fort Hare to become the first African barrister in Southern Rhodesia — a man the settler state had to pass a special law to accommodate.

At the bar he defended the nationalists the regime tried to silence — among them Ndabaningi Sithole and Robert Mugabe — and advised Joshua Nkomo at the 1961 constitutional conference in London. In 1962 he became independent Tanganyika's first African Director of Public Prosecutions; in 1963 he helped found ZANU and was elected its National Chairman at the Gweru congress of 1964, under the party's guiding credo: “We are our own liberators.”

From 1966 he gave himself wholly to the armed struggle from Lusaka, building ZANLA alongside Josiah Tongogara, forging the alliance with FRELIMO that opened the north-eastern front in 1972, and chairing the Dare reChimurenga — the war council of the Second Chimurenga. He was assassinated by a car bomb at his Lusaka home on 18 March 1975. He rests at National Heroes' Acre, Harare.

• 1923

  Born 15 June at Watsomba, Nyanga district, Manicaland.

• 1945

  Qualifies as a teacher at Adams College, Natal — where he meets Victoria Mahamba-Sithole.

• 1949

  Graduates BA in English from Fort Hare University College.

• 1954

  Called to the English Bar; becomes the first African barrister in Southern Rhodesia.

• 1955

  Marries Victoria in Durban; the couple settle in Salisbury (Harare).

• 1962

  Appointed Tanganyika's first African Director of Public Prosecutions.

• 1963–64

  Co-founds ZANU; elected National Chairman at the first congress in Gweru.

• 1966

  Moves to Lusaka to lead the armed struggle full-time; ZANLA takes shape.

• 1972

  Coordinates with FRELIMO to open the decisive north-eastern war front.

• 1973

  Elected Chairman of the Dare reChimurenga, ZANU's war council.

• 1975

  Assassinated by car bomb in Lusaka, 18 March. Later reburied at National Heroes' Acre.

No telling of Herbert Chitepo's story is complete without Amai Victoria Fikile Chitepo (1928–2016) — teacher, activist, minister, and National Heroine of Zimbabwe.

Born Victoria Mahamba-Sithole in Dundee, KwaZulu-Natal, she was educated at Adams College and the University of Natal, with postgraduate studies in education at the University of Birmingham. She met Herbert at Adams College, married him in 1955, and moved with him to Salisbury — stepping directly into the nationalist movement.

In 1961 she led a women's sit-in at Salisbury's Magistrates' Court to demand rights for the disenfranchised majority. In exile she worked as a social worker among Zimbabwean refugees in Dar es Salaam, and famously carried her husband's message into Rhodesia to the detained ZANU leadership at Sikombela. Widowed by the 1975 assassination, she remained in the struggle until independence.

In free Zimbabwe she won the Mutasa seat in the 1980 elections and served in cabinet for over a decade — Deputy Minister of Education and Culture, Minister of Natural Resources and Tourism, and Minister of Information, Posts and Telecommunications — before retiring in 1992. She died in Harare on 8 April 2016 and was buried at National Heroes' Acre beside the generation she helped set free.

“He was an inspiration.” — Amai Victoria Chitepo, on her husband

• 1928

  Born 27 March in Dundee, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

• 1955

  Marries Herbert Chitepo; moves to Southern Rhodesia.

• 1961

  Leads women's sit-in at Salisbury Magistrates' Court.

• 1965

  Carries Herbert's message to detained leaders at Sikombela.

• 1980

  Elected MP for Mutasa; appointed to Zimbabwe's first cabinet.

• 1982–92

  Serves as Minister of Natural Resources & Tourism, later Information, Posts & Telecommunications.

• 2016

  Dies 8 April; declared National Heroine, buried at Heroes' Acre.