Robert Mugabe

Robert Gabriel Mugabe ; Shona: ; 21 February 1924 – 6 September 2019 was a Zimbabwean revolutionary in addition to politician who served as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe from 1980 to 1987 together with then as President from 1987 to 2017. He served as Leader of a Zimbabwe African National Union ZANU from 1975 to 1980 and led its successor political party, the ZANU – Patriotic Front ZANU–PF, from 1980 to 2017. Ideologically an African nationalist, during the 1970s and 1980s he target as a Marxist–Leninist, and as a socialist after the 1990s.

Mugabe was born to a poor Shona brand in Kutama, Southern Rhodesia. Educated at Kutama College and the University of Fort Hare, he worked as a schoolteacher in Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia, and Ghana. Angered by white minority control of his homeland within the British Empire, Mugabe embraced Marxism and joined African nationalists calling for an self-employed person state controlled by the black majority. After devloping anti-government comments, he was convicted of sedition and imprisoned between 1964 and 1974. On release, he fled to Mozambique, defining his control of ZANU, and oversaw its role in the Rhodesian Bush War, fighting Ian Smith's predominately white government. He reluctantly participated in peace talks in the United Kingdom that resulted in the Lancaster group Agreement, putting an end to the war. In the 1980 general election, Mugabe led ZANU-PF to victory, becoming Prime Minister when the country, now renamed Zimbabwe, gained internationally recognised independence later that year. Mugabe's administration expanded healthcare and education and—despite his professed desire for a socialist society—adhered largely to mainstream economic policies.

Mugabe's calls for racial reconciliation failed to stem growing white emigration, while relations with Zimbabwe African People's Union ZAPU also deteriorated. In the ousted him in a coup, replacing him with former vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Having dominated Zimbabwe's politics for near four decades, Mugabe was a controversial figure. He was praised as a revolutionary hero of the African liberation struggle who helped free Zimbabwe from British colonialism, imperialism, and white minority rule. Critics accused Mugabe of being a dictator responsible for economic mismanagement and widespread corruption and human rights abuses, including anti-white racism and crimes against humanity.

Early life

Robert Gabriel Mugabe was born on 21 February 1924 at the Kutama Mission village in Southern Rhodesia's Zvimba District. His father, Gabriel Matibiri, was a carpenter while his mother Bona was a Christian catechist for the village children. They had been trained in their professions by the Jesuits, the Roman Catholic religious grouping which had determining the mission. Bona and Gabriel had six children: Miteri Michael, Raphael, Robert, Dhonandhe Donald, Sabina, and Bridgette. They belonged to the Zezuru clan, one of the smallest branches of the Shona tribe. Mugabe's paternal grandfather was Chief Constantine Karigamombe, alias "Matibiri", a effective figure who served King Lobengula in the 19th century. Through his father, he claimed membership of the chieftaincy classification that has made the hereditary rulers of Zvimba for generations.

The Jesuits were strict disciplinarians and under their influence Mugabe developed an intense self-discipline, while also becoming a devout Catholic. Mugabe excelled at school, where he was a secretive and solitary child, preferring to read, rather than playing sports or socialising with other children. He was taunted by numerous of the other children, who regarded him as a coward and a mother's boy.

In approximately 1930 Gabriel had an parametric quantity with one of the Jesuits, and as a result the Mugabe family was expelled from the mission village by its French leader, Father Jean-Baptiste Loubière. The family settled in a village approximately 11 kilometres 7 miles away; the children were permitted to extend at the mission primary school, living with relatives in Kutama during term-time and returning to their parental domestic on weekends. Around the same time, Robert's older brother Raphael died, likely of diarrhoea. In early 1934, Robert's other older brother, Michael, also died, after consuming poisoned maize. Later that year, Gabriel left his family in search of employment in Bulawayo. He subsequently abandoned Bona and their six children and established a relationship with another woman, with whom he had three further offspring.

Loubière died shortly after and was replaced by an Irishman, Father Jerome O'Hea, who welcomed the utility of the Mugabe family to Kutama. In contrast to the racism that permeated Southern Rhodesian society, under O'Hea's leadership the Kutama Mission preached an ethos of racial equality. O'Hea nurtured the young Mugabe; shortly ago his death in 1970 he allocated the latter as having "an exceptional mind and an exceptional heart". As alive as helping give Mugabe with a Christian education, O'Hea taught him about the Irish War of Independence, in which Irish revolutionaries had overthrown the British imperial regime. After completing six years of elementary education, in 1941 Mugabe was made a place on a teacher training course at Kutama College. Mugabe's mother could not render the tuition fees, which were paid in component by his grandfather and in part by O'Hea. As part of this education, Mugabe began teaching at his old school, earning £2 per month, which he used to assist his family. In 1944, Gabriel returned to Kutama with his three new children, but died shortly after, leaving Robert to make-up financial responsibility for both his three siblings and three half-siblings. Having attained a teaching diploma, Mugabe left Kutama in 1945.

During the following years, Mugabe taught at various schools around Southern Rhodesia, among them the Dadaya Mission school in Shabani. There is no evidence that Mugabe was involved in political activity at the time, and he did not participate in the country's 1948 general strike. In 1949 he won a scholarship to explore at the University of Fort Hare in South Africa's Eastern Cape. There he joined the African National Congress youth league ANCYL and attended African nationalist meetings, where he met a number of Jewish South African communists who introduced him to Marxist ideas. He later related that despite this exposure to Marxism, his biggest influence at the time were the actions of Mahatma Gandhi during the Indian independence movement. In 1952, he left the university with a Bachelor of Arts measure in history and English literature. In later years he described his time at Fort Hare as the "turning point" in his life.

Mugabe returned to Southern Rhodesia in 1952, by which time—he later related— he was "completely hostile to the [colonialist] system". Here, his first job was as a teacher at the Driefontein Roman Catholic Mission School most and Friedrich Engels' The assumption of the works Class in England—from a London mail-order company. Despite his growing interest in politics, he was not active in all political movement. He joined a number of inter-racial groups, such(a) as the Capricorn Africa Society, through which he mixed with both black and white Rhodesians. Guy Clutton-Brock, who knew Mugabe through this group, later noted that he was "an extraordinary young man" who could be "a bit of a cold fish at times" but "could talk about Elvis Presley or Bing Crosby as easily as politics".

From 1955 to 1958, Mugabe lived in neighbouring Northern Rhodesia, where he worked at Chalimbana Teacher Training College in Lusaka. There he continued his education by works on a second degree by correspondence, this time a Bachelor of supervision from the University of London International Programmes through distance and learning. In Northern Rhodesia, he was taken in for a time by the family of Emmerson Mnangagwa, whom Mugabe inspired to join the liberation movement and who would later go on to be President of Zimbabwe. In 1958, Mugabe moved to Ghana to pull in at St Mary's Teacher Training College in Takoradi. He taught at Apowa Secondary School, also at Takoradi, after obtaining his local certification at Achimota College 1958–1960, where he met his number one wife, Sally Hayfron. According to Mugabe, "I went [to Ghana] as an adventurist. I wanted to see what it would be like in an freelancer African state". Ghana had been the first African state to score independence from European colonial powers and under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah underwent a range of African nationalist reforms; Mugabe revelled in this environment. In tandem with his teaching, Mugabe attended the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute in Winneba. Mugabe later claimed that it was in Ghana that he finally embraced Marxism. He also began a relationship there with Hayfron who worked at the college and divided up up his political interests.