Robert Mugabe FACTFILE

DEDICATED STUDENT

Robert Gabriel Mugabe was born in 1924 in the northern town of Kutama. At the time, Zimbabwe was a British colony known as Southern Rhodesia. He excelled at school and became a teacher, continuing his education at the University of Fort Hare in South Africa — which Nelson Mandela also attended — and the University of London via correspondence. He moved to Ghana where he studied economics and taught at a teacher training college. While in the west African nation, he met his first wife, Sarah Heyfron, also known as Sally, and married her in 1961. Sally Mugabe died of complications from kidney failure in 1992 and Mugabe later married his secretary, Grace, in 1996.

LIBERATION STRUGGLE

Mugabe founded the socialist Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) party in 1963 to resist colonial rule, which was characterised by segregation and fewer rights for non-white citizens including not being allowed to vote and the denial of access to prime land. He was jailed by the Rhodesian government in 1964 and spent 11 years as a political prisoner. Mugabe became prime minister of Zimbabwe upon independence in 1980 following a civil war and was elected president in 1987. He reached a power-sharing agreement with Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in 2008. Mugabe resumed full control of the country in 2013 when he was elected to his seventh term as president.

HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES

Mugabe, a member of the country’s dominant Shona tribe, is accused of a catalogue of human rights abuses during his rule,

MNANGAGWA, 75, a member of the country’s dominant Shona tribe, was born in 1942, in Zvishavane, central Zimbabwe. His name is pronounced Mn-uh-ng-ug-wa. He was fired as vice-president by Mugabe – who accused him of plotting to take over from him – on November 6 and fled the country.

A former justice and defence minister, Mnangagwa was an ally of Mugabe for around 50 years, from the days of the pre-independence liberation struggle.

Mnangagwa served as Mugabe’s enforcer, earning him the nickname “The Crocodile” for his ruthlessness. His supporters are known as Team Lacoste because of the fashion brand’s reptilian logo.

He joined the fight against minority white rule while still a teenager and was convicted of blowing up a train in 1965 and sentenced to death by hanging. When he was found to be under 21, he was instead sentenced to 10 years in prison and jailed with contemporaries including Mugabe.

Opposition supporters believe Mnangagwa was instrumental in the killings of tens of thousands of civilians from the Ndebele ethnic minority in the early 1980s as Mugabe moved to quash opposition.