ACTIVISTS loyal to Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe have visited the grave of colonialist Cecil Rhodes to demand permission to exhume his remains and return them to Britain.

A group of Zanu-PF supporters and veterans from the country's liberation war travelled to the remote site last week to express their anger at the continued presence of the Oxford-educated mining magnate's body in Zimbabwe.

The fresh call to exhume Rhodes' remains comes nearly 110 years after the colonial pioneer was laid to rest in 1902 in the Matopos hills outside the country's second city of Bulawayo.

At the time, the land lay inside Rhodesia, a British territory established in his own name by the millionaire businessman and politician.

However groups loyal to Mugabe have repeatedly called for Rhodes' grave to be removed since the country gained its independence in 1980....