Mugabe’s iron grip led Zimbabwe into poverty

Once courted by world leaders, Mugabe has since become an international pariah. His tenures as prime minister and later president have been marked by political division, repression, war, a faltering economy and election rigging. But now that the military has put him under house arrest, finally loosening his iron grip on power, it looks like the violent reign of Zimbabwe’s tyrant is over.

Robert Gabriel Mugabe was born on February 21, 1924, in Kutama, on a Jesuit mission in Southern Rhodesia. In 1934 his father Gabriel, a carpenter, went to work as a missionary in South Africa and never returned, leaving his mother Bona, a teacher, to raise four children on her own. Although Gabriel later returned with three more children to a different wife, he died, leaving Mugabe as the primary carer for his family.

But Mugabe was fortunate he had a mentor in Father Jerome O’Hea, who recognised the boy’s intelligence and helped educate him. O’Hea later paid half of the tuition fees for Mugabe’s teacher training course.

Mugabe gained his teaching diploma in 1945 and taught in schools around Southern and Northern Rhodesia, and later in Ghana.

In 1949 he won a scholarship to study history and English at Fort Hare (where he was first introduced to politics) completing a degree in 1952. In 1958 he earned a correspondence degree in economics.

Mugabe returned to Southern Rhodesia in 1960 and, in 1961, married Sally Hayfron, who he had met in Ghana. (She later returned to Ghana taking their son, Michael, with her.) By then Mugabe was a Marxist and his revolutionary fervour was fired by a boom in the white population and a denial of indigenous rights.

He joined the National Democratic Party, but when it was outlawed in 1961 he joined Joshua Nkomo’s Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU). He soon grew disenchanted with Nkomo’s leadership and helped Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole form the breakaway Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) in 1963.

In 1964 he was imprisoned for making seditious statements. He spent 10 years behind bars but made use of his time there; he taught English to the other prisoners, completed a law degree and, in 1969, orchestrated the overthrow of Sithole as leader of ZANU.

Meanwhile Southern Rhodesia was undergoing major political change. In 1965 prime minister Ian Smith declared independence from Britain, renaming the country Zimbabwe. The government held a referendum in 1969 to change the constitution to ensure minority white rule. In 1970 that constitution was adopted and the country was declared a republic.

The banned ZANU and ZAPU parties, operating from exile, organised raids into Zimbabwe agitating against Smith’s rule. In 1974 Smith allowed Mugabe to leave prison to attend talks to end the violence, but Mugabe fled and joined the rebellion. He formed a unified Patriotic Front with Nkomo.

Pressured by surrounding countries and the escalating civil war, Smith submitted to talks to end the conflict in 1979 in London. Britain agreed to recognise Zimbabwe’s independence contingent on democratic elections. During the campaign Mugabe survived two assassination attempts, which he blamed on Smith’s security forces. Mugabe’s ZANU party won the election, held in 1980 under British supervision, and he was sworn in as prime minister.

In the first months of Mugabe’s rule he and Nkomo presented a united front, but soon the uneasy peace broke down. Nkomo was fired from the cabinet in 1981 and violence flared between both parties. But they reunited in 1987. Mugabe was then elevated to the presidency, appointing Nkomo as a senior minister.

Over the next 30 years Mugabe squandered most of the political capital and goodwill he had with both foreign nations and his own people. A disastrous policy of seizing white farmers’ land and redistributing it to people with no farming experience caused a major rupture in the economy leading to inflation, unemployment and unrest. His solution was to continue to rig elections and brutally repress any opposition.

In 2008 he actually lost the election to Morgan Tsvangirai but refused to relinquish power, demanding a recount and a new election. The violent reaction to his scheming resulted in a power-sharing arrangement with Tsvangirai, in which he still managed to hold on to most of the power.

Another rigged election in 2013 saw him re-elected, but concerns over his purging of party veterans and signs that he was trying to control social media ahead of the 2018 elections prompted the military to step in and put an end to his tyranny.