Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s loyalists have paid tribute to Kim Jong Il, describing the 69-year-old North Korean despot as a ‘lovely man’, who ‘was chosen by his people and regularly conducted elections’.

Didymus Mutasa, the secretary of administration for Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party, told Zimbabwe state radio: ‘He was our great friend and we are not ashamed of being associated with him.’

The dead North Korean leader was involved in the training and equipping of a para-military group in the African country in the early 1980s.