Robert Mugabe
Robert Gabriel Mugabe (/mʊˈɡɑːbi/;[1] Shona: [muɡaɓe]; 21 February 1924 – 6 September 2019) was a Zimbabwean revolutionary and politician who served as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe from 1980 to 1987 and then as President from 1987 to 2017. He served as Leader of the 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 identified as a Marxist–Leninist, and as a socialist after the 1990s.
"Mugabe" redirects here. For other uses, see Mugabe (disambiguation).
Robert Mugabe
Morgan Tsvangirai (2009–2013)
- Simon Muzenda
- Joice Mujuru
- Emmerson Mnangagwa
Canaan Banana
Simon Muzenda
Morgan Tsvangirai (2009)
- Joseph Msika
- John Nkomo
- Oppah Muchinguri
- Simon Khaya Moyo
- Joseph Msika
- John Nkomo
- Joice Mujuru
- Emmerson Mnangagwa
Emmerson Mnangagwa
6 September 2019 (aged 95)
Singapore
Kutama, Zimbabwe
Mugabe was born to a poor Shona family in Kutama, Southern Rhodesia. Educated at Kutama College and the University of Fort Hare in South Africa, he then worked as a schoolteacher in Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia, and Ghana. Angered by white minority rule of his homeland within the British Empire, Mugabe embraced Marxism and joined African nationalists calling for an independent state controlled by the black majority. After making antigovernmental comments, he was convicted of sedition and imprisoned between 1964 and 1974. On release, he fled to Mozambique, established his leadership of ZANU, and oversaw its role in the Rhodesian Bush War, fighting Ian Smith's predominantly white government. He reluctantly participated in peace talks in the United Kingdom that resulted in the Lancaster House 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 recognized 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 Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) also deteriorated. In the Gukurahundi of 1982–1987, Mugabe's Fifth Brigade crushed ZAPU-linked opposition in Matabeleland in a campaign that killed at least 20,000 people, mostly Ndebele civilians. Internationally, he sent troops into the Second Congo War and chaired the Non-Aligned Movement (1986–1989), the Organisation of African Unity (1997–1998), and the African Union (2015–2016). Pursuing decolonisation, Mugabe emphasized the redistribution of land controlled by white farmers to landless blacks, initially on a "willing seller–willing buyer" basis. Frustrated at the slow rate of redistribution, from 2000 he encouraged black Zimbabweans to violently seize white-owned farms. Food production was severely impacted, leading to famine, economic decline, and foreign sanctions. Opposition to Mugabe grew, but he was re-elected in 2002, 2008, and 2013 through campaigns dominated by violence, electoral fraud, and nationalistic appeals to his rural Shona voter base. In 2017, members of his party ousted him in a coup, replacing him with former vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa.
Having dominated Zimbabwe's politics for nearly 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, crimes against humanity and genocide.
Early life
Childhood: 1924–1945
Robert Gabriel Mugabe was born on 21 February 1924 at the Kutama Mission village in Southern Rhodesia's Zvimba District.[2] His father, Gabriel Matibiri, was a carpenter while his mother Bona was a Christian catechist for the village children.[3] They had been trained in their professions by the Jesuits, the Roman Catholic religious order which had established the mission.[4] Bona and Gabriel had six children: Miteri (Michael), Raphael, Robert, Dhonandhe (Donald), Sabina, and Bridgette.[5] They belonged to the Zezuru clan, one of the smallest branches of the Shona tribe.[6] Mugabe's paternal grandfather was Chief Constantine Karigamombe, alias "Matibiri", a powerful figure who served King Lobengula in the 19th century.[7] Through his father, he claimed membership of the chieftaincy family that has provided the hereditary rulers of Zvimba for generations.[8]
The Jesuits were strict disciplinarians and under their influence Mugabe developed an intense self-discipline,[4] while also becoming a devout Catholic.[9] Mugabe excelled at school,[10] where he was a secretive and solitary child,[11] preferring to read, rather than playing sports or socialising with other children.[12] He was taunted by many of the other children, who regarded him as a coward and a mother's boy.[13]
In about 1930 Gabriel had an argument 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.[14] The family settled in a village about 11 kilometres (7 miles) away; the children were permitted to remain at the mission primary school, living with relatives in Kutama during term-time and returning to their parental home on weekends.[10] Around the same time, Robert's older brother Raphael died, likely of diarrhoea.[10] In early 1934, Robert's other older brother, Michael, also died, after consuming poisoned maize.[15] Later that year, Gabriel left his family in search of employment in Bulawayo.[16] He subsequently abandoned Bona and their six children and established a relationship with another woman, with whom he had three further offspring.[17]
Loubière died shortly after and was replaced by an Irishman, Father Jerome O'Hea, who welcomed the return of the Mugabe family to Kutama.[10] In contrast to the racism that permeated Southern Rhodesian society, under O'Hea's leadership the Kutama Mission preached an ethos of racial equality.[18] O'Hea nurtured the young Mugabe; shortly before his death in 1970 he described the latter as having "an exceptional mind and an exceptional heart".[19] As well as helping provide 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.[20] After completing six years of elementary education, in 1941 Mugabe was offered a place on a teacher training course at Kutama College. Mugabe's mother could not afford the tuition fees, which were paid in part by his grandfather and in part by O'Hea.[21] As part of this education, Mugabe began teaching at his old school, earning £2 per month, which he used to support his family.[22] In 1944, Gabriel returned to Kutama with his three new children, but died shortly after, leaving Robert to take financial responsibility for both his three siblings and three half-siblings.[22] Having attained a teaching diploma, Mugabe left Kutama in 1945.[23]
University education and teaching career: 1945–1960
During the following years, Mugabe taught at various schools around Southern Rhodesia,[24] among them the Dadaya Mission school in Shabani.[25] 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.[26] In 1949 he won a scholarship to study at the University of Fort Hare in South Africa's Eastern Cape.[27] There he joined the African National Congress youth league (ANCYL)[28] and attended African nationalist meetings, where he met a number of Jewish South African communists who introduced him to Marxist ideas.[29] 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.[30] In 1952, he left the university with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and English literature.[31] In later years he described his time at Fort Hare as the "turning point" in his life.[32]
Mugabe returned to Southern Rhodesia in 1952,[33] by which time—he later related— he was "completely hostile to the [colonialist] system".[34] Here, his first job was as a teacher at the Driefontein Roman Catholic Mission School near Umvuma.[28] In 1953 he relocated to the Highfield Government School in Salisbury's Harari township and in 1954 to the Mambo Township Government School in Gwelo.[35] Meanwhile, he gained a Bachelor of Education degree by correspondence from the University of South Africa,[36] and ordered a number of Marxist tracts—among them Karl Marx's Capital and Friedrich Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England—from a London mail-order company.[37] Despite his growing interest in politics, he was not active in any political movement.[34] He joined a number of inter-racial groups, such as the Capricorn Africa Society, through which he mixed with both black and white Rhodesians.[38] 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".[39]
From 1955 to 1958, Mugabe lived in neighbouring Northern Rhodesia, where he worked at Chalimbana Teacher Training College in Lusaka.[36] There he continued his education by working on a second degree by correspondence, this time a Bachelor of Administration from the University of London International Programmes through distance and learning. [36] 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.[40] In 1958, Mugabe moved to Ghana to work at St Mary's Teacher Training College in Takoradi.[41] He taught at Apowa Secondary School, also at Takoradi, after obtaining his local certification at Achimota College (1958–1960), where he met his first wife, Sally Hayfron.[42] According to Mugabe, "I went [to Ghana] as an adventurist. I wanted to see what it would be like in an independent African state".[43] Ghana had been the first African state to gain independence from European colonial powers and under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah underwent a range of African nationalist reforms; Mugabe reveled in this environment.[44] In tandem with his teaching, Mugabe attended the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute in Winneba.[45] Mugabe later claimed that it was in Ghana that he finally embraced Marxism.[46] He also began a relationship there with Hayfron who worked at the college and shared his political interests.[47]
Revolutionary activity
Early political career: 1960–1963
While Mugabe was teaching abroad, an anti-colonialist African nationalist movement was established in Southern Rhodesia. It was first led by Joshua Nkomo's Southern Rhodesia African National Congress, founded in September 1957 and then banned by the colonial government in February 1959.[48] SRANC was replaced by the more radically oriented National Democratic Party (NDP), founded in January 1960.[49] In May 1960, Mugabe returned to Southern Rhodesia, bringing Hayfron with him.[50] The pair had planned for their visit to be short, however Mugabe's friend, the African nationalist Leopold Takawira, urged them to stay.[51]
President of Zimbabwe
Constitutional and economic reform: 1987–1995
In late 1987, Zimbabwe's parliament amended the constitution.[249] On 30 December it declared Mugabe to be executive president, a new position that combined the roles of head of state, head of government, and commander-in-chief of the armed forces.[250] This position gave him the power to dissolve parliament, declare martial law, and run for an unlimited number of terms.[251] According to Meredith, Mugabe now had "a virtual stranglehold on government machinery and unlimited opportunities to exercise patronage".[251] The constitutional amendments also abolished the twenty parliamentary seats reserved for white representatives,[252] and left parliament less relevant and independent.[253]
In the build-up to the 1990 election, parliamentary reforms increased the number of seats to 120; of these, twenty were to be appointed by the President and ten by the Council of Chiefs.[254] This measure made it more difficult for any opposition to Mugabe to gain a parliamentary majority.[255] The main opposition party in that election were the Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM), launched in April 1989 by Tekere;[256] although a longstanding friend of Mugabe, Tekere accused him of betraying the revolution and establishing a dictatorship.[257] ZANU–PF propaganda made threats against those considering voting ZUM in the election; one television advert featured images of a car crash with the statement "This is one way to die. Another is to vote ZUM. Don't commit suicide, vote ZANU-PF and live."[258] In the election, Mugabe was re-elected President with nearly 80% of the vote, while ZANU–PF secured 116 of the 119 available parliamentary seats.[259]
Mugabe had long hoped to convert Zimbabwe into a one-party state, but in 1990 he officially "postponed" these plans as both Mozambique and many Eastern Bloc states transitioned from one-party states to multi-party republics.[260] Following the collapse of the Marxist-Leninist regimes in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, in 1991 ZANU–PF removed references to "Marxism-Leninism" and "scientific socialism" in its material; Mugabe maintained that "socialism remains our sworn ideology".[261] That year, Mugabe pledged himself to free market economics and accepted a structural adjustment programme provided by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).[262] This economic reform package called for Zimbabwe to privatise state assets and reduce import tariffs;[184] Mugabe's government implemented some but not all of its recommendations.[262] The reforms encouraged employers to cut their wages, generating growing opposition from the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions.[263]
By 1990, 52,000 black families had been settled on 6.5 million acres. This was insufficient to deal with the country's overcrowding problem, which was being exacerbated by the growth in the black population.[264] That year, Zimbabwe's parliament passed an amendment allowing the government to expropriate land at a fixed price while denying land-owners the right of appeal to the courts.[265] The government hoped that by doing so it could settle 110,000 black families on 13 million acres, which would require the expropriation of approximately half of all white-owned land.[265] Zimbabwe's Commercial Farmers Union argued that the proposed measures would wreck the country's economy, urging the government to instead settle landless blacks on the half-a-million acres of land that was either unproductive or state-owned.[266]
Concerns about the proposed measure—particularly its denial of the right to appeal—were voiced by the UK, US, and Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace.[265] The US, UK, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank threatened that if Zimbabwe implemented the law, it would forfeit foreign aid packages.[267] Responding to the criticisms, the government removed the ban on court appeals from the bill, which was then passed as law.[268] Over the following few years, hundreds of thousands of acres of largely white-owned land were expropriated.[269] In April 1994, a newspaper investigation found that not all of this was redistributed to landless blacks; much of the expropriated land was being leased to ministers and senior officials such as Witness Mangwede, who was leased a 3000-acre farm in Hwedza.[270] Responding to this scandal, in 1994 the UK government—which had supplied £44 million for land redistribution—halted its payments.[271]
In January 1992, Mugabe's wife died.[272] In April 1995, Horizon magazine revealed that Mugabe had secretly been having an affair with his secretary Grace Marufu since 1987 and that she had borne him a son and a daughter.[273] His secret revealed, Mugabe decided to hold a much-publicized wedding. 12,000 people were invited to the August 1996 ceremony, which took place in Kutama and was orchestrated by the head of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Harare, Patrick Chakaipa.[274] The ceremony was controversial among the Catholic community because of the adulterous nature of Mugabe and Marufu's relationship.[275] To house his family, Mugabe then built a new mansion at Borrowdale.[276] In the 1995 parliamentary election—which saw a low turnout of 31.7%—ZANU–PF gained 147 out of 150 seats.[263] Following the election, Mugabe expanded his cabinet from 29 to 42 ministers while the government adopted a 133% pay rise for MPs.[277]