Mugabe: From freedom fighter to despot
EX-LEADER RULED ZIMBABWE WITH IRON FIST
Robert Mugabe, the former president of Zimbabwe, who has died aged 95, began his 37 years in power as a Nobel Peace Prize nominee credited with creating Africa’s most successful multiracial state; by the time he was ousted in 2017 his determination to remain in charge had driven the country to ruin and ensured his place as an international pariah, while the determination of his widely detested second wife, Grace, to succeed him had threatened to plunge the country into civil war and led to a military intervention.
Mugabe had risen to prominence as a Marxist guerrilla leader of the rebellion against white minority rule in Rhodesia.
Then in 1980 he was elected the first prime minister of the newly independent Zimbabwe. But once in office he presided over the despoliation of the country whose existence he had helped bring about.
Once called the “jewel of Africa” by the president of neighbouring Mozambique, Zimbabwe became the second poorest country in the world, with unemployment and poverty rates of around 80 per cent and one of the lowest life expectancies on Earth.
Mugabe’s admirers in the West were surprised by his transformation from revolutionary hero into tyrant; for though he had made no secret of his one-party ambitions, he had appeared to tolerate the trappings of democracy — elections, a small independent press, trade unions and a more or less independent justice system.
By the time he was toppled to wild celebrations across the country of 13 million, he was viewed by many at home and abroad as a power-obsessed autocrat who unleashed death squads, rigged elections and ruined the economy to keep control.
Mugabe called his departure an “unconstitutional and humiliating” betrayal. Confined to his sprawling Harare mansion, he stayed bitter to the end.
Born on Feb. 21, 1924, on a Roman Catholic mission near Harare, Mugabe was educated by Jesuit priests and worked as a primary school teacher before going to South Africa’s University of Fort Hare, then a breeding ground for African nationalism.
Returning to then-Rhodesia in 1960, he entered politics and was jailed for a decade for opposing white rule. After his release, he rose to lead the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army guerrilla
movement.
Mugabe took power after seven years of a liberation war, with a reputation as “the thinking man’s guerrilla.” He held seven degrees, three earned behind bars as a political prisoner of then-Rhodesia’s white minority rulers. Later, he would boast of another qualification: “a degree in violence.”
Just three years after independence, he sent the army’s North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade into the homeland of the Ndebele people to crush loyalists of his rival, Joshua Nkomo.
Human rights groups estimate as many as 20,000 people died in a two-year purge the opposition referred to as genocide.
In fiery speeches throughout his rule he painted his actions as a just response to a racist colonial legacy, with his most important priority the redistribution of land held by whites.
When he failed to change the constitution to allow seizure without compensation, his followers stormed farms. His enemies called it a lawless grab for power and wealth. Output cratered and southern Africa’s breadbasket could barely feed itself.
In 2015 Mugabe announced his intention to run for re-election in 2018, later claiming that he would remain in power “until God says ‘come.’” But deteriorating health (in 2017 he made three medical trips to Singapore) unleashed a toxic succession battle that escalated as Grace Mugabe emerged as her husband’s preferred successor.
Her main rival was Emmerson Mnangagwa, Mugabe’s vice-president, a former security chief known as “the crocodile.” Mnangagwa, though implicated in human rights abuses in his decades by Mugabe’s side, was seen as competent and level-headed and was tipped as the preferred successor candidate of both Zimbabwean businessmen and the military, as well as foreign investors.
On Nov. 6, 2017, however, in a move seen as engineered by Grace, he was dismissed by Mugabe and fled to South Africa. A week later, Zimbabwe’s military intervened, seizing state television and blocking roads to the main government offices, parliament and the courts in central Harare.
Mugabe was placed under house arrest, while Grace was reported to have fled to Namibia. Later in the month Mnangagwa was sworn in.
Mugabe often stated his intention to live to be 100. On his 88th birthday he said: “I have died many times. That’s where I have beaten Christ. Christ died once and resurrected once — I am as fit as a fiddle.”
The Daily Telgraph, Reuters
I HAVE DIED MANY
TIMES. THAT’S WHERE I HAVE BEATEN
CHRIST.