A liberation hero-turned despot
harare — Zimbabwe’s veteran leader Robert Mugabe once quipped that he’d rule his country until he turned 100.
But the 93-year-old’s decadeslong grip on power was slipping on Sunday after his own party told him to resign or face impeachment.
First heralded as a liberator who rid the former British colony Rhodesia of white minority rule, Robert Gabriel Mugabe was soon cast in the role of a despot who crushed political dissent and ruined the national economy.
After years behind bars as a political prisoner, Mugabe then led a bloody liberation war, which coupled with sanctions, forced the Rhodesian government to the negotiating table. The country finally won independence as Zimbabwe in 1980.
In elections that year, Mugabe swept to power as prime minister, initially winning international plaudits for his policy of racial reconciliation and for extending improved education and health services to the black majority. But his lustre faded quickly.
After his release from prison in 1974, Mugabe took over as head of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) which joined forces in the liberation struggle with Joshua Nkomo’s Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU).
Nkomo was one of the early casualties of Mugabe’s crackdown on dissent.
In 1982, he was dismissed from government, where he held the home affairs portfolio, after the discovery of an arms cache in his Matabeleland stronghold.
“He was a great leader whose leadership degenerated to a level where he really brought Zimbabwe to its knees,” said University of South Africa professor Shadrack Gutto.
Britain’s former foreign secretary Peter Carrington knew Mugabe well, having mediated the Lancaster House talks that paved the way for Zimbabwe’s indepen- dence. “Mugabe wasn’t human at all,” Carrington told biographer Heidi Holland. “There was a sort of reptilian quality about him.
“You could admire his skills and intellect... but he was an awfully slippery sort of person.”
In the final decades of his rule, Mugabe has embraced his new role as the antagonist of the West. Born on February 21, 1924 into a Catholic family at Kutama Mission northwest of Harare, Mugabe was described as a loner, and a studious child known to carry a book even while tending cattle in the bush.After his carpenter father walked out on the family when he was 10, the young Mugabe concentrated on his studies, qualifying as a schoolteacher at the age of 17. After teaching in Ghana Mugabe returned to Rhodesia where he was detained for his nationalist activities in 1964.
He spent the next 10 years in prison camps or jail.
During his incarceration, he gained three degrees through correspondence, but the years in prison left their mark.
His four-year-old son by his first wife, Ghanaian-born Sally Francesca Hayfron, died while he was behind bars. Rhodesian leader Ian Smith denied him leave to attend the funeral. Years later, Mugabe had two sons and a daughter by second wife Grace. —