"The world's powers want to continue to hold on to their power. When they had the chance to help us, they treated us like animals, destroyed our land. Now we have to fight to build our own power."

TWO of Gaddafi's most loyal friends, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and former nurse Oksana Balinskaya, have expressed their grief at the news of his death.

Longtime ally Chavez reacted angrily to the "murder" of the desposed Libyan leader. Chavez had consistently criticised Nato's intervention in Libya, calling instead for a peaceful solution to the civil war.

He told reporters last night that Gaddafi would be remembered "all of my life as a great fighter, a revolutionary and a martyr".

Meanwhile, Gaddafi's one-time nurse has told The Daily Beast that she's devastated by her former employer's death and considers him a "brave hero."

Ukrainian Oksana Balinskaya went to work for Gaddafi at the age of 21 and cared for him until last February, when she returned to Ukraine. "All these months, I hoped that he would survive", Balinskaya said. "Why should we hate him or think of him as a tyrant, if he gave us jobs and paid us well?"

Robert Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe claims Gaddafi is the victim of western neo-colonialists. A sympathetic obituary on state television stated: "He will be to many a hero who went down fighting and exposed the west's colonising mission in Africa in order to secure the continent's rich resources, that is oil in the case of Libya."

Retired Major Cairo Mhandu, a member of Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party, echoed those sentiments: "This is a sad day for the people of Africa", he told the Global Post. "This is the beginning of a new re-colonisation of Africa. Through the forces of Nato and the West, we have lost one of our brothers".

In the Toro Kingdom of Uganda, leading daily New Vision reports that the population is in mourning. "Gaddafi has been a darling of Toro kingdom and is well remembered for having rehabilitated the Kingdom’s palace, constructed the main mosque in Fort Portal town and paid school fees for Princess Ruth Komuntale."