Robert Gabriel Mugabe (21 February
1924 – 6 September 2019) was a Zimbabwean revolutionary, politician, and
dictator who served as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe from 1980 to 1987 and then as
President from 1987 to 2017. He chaired the Zimbabwe African National Union
(ZANU) group 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. He
identified as a socialist after the 1990s. His policies have been described as Mugabeism.
Mugabe was born to a poor Shona family
in Kutama, Southern Rhodesia. Following an education at Kutama College and the University
of Fort Hare, he worked as a school teacher in Southern Rhodesia, Northern
Rhodesia, and Ghana. Angered that Southern Rhodesia was a colony of the British
Empire governed by its white minority, Mugabe embraced Marxism and joined
African nationalist protests calling for an independent state led by representatives
of the black majority. After making anti-government 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 ZANU's role in the Rhodesian
Bush War, fighting Ian Smith's predominantly white government. He reluctantly
took part in the peace negotiations brokered by the United Kingdom that
resulted in the Lancaster House Agreement. The agreement ended the war and
resulted in the 1980 general election, at which Mugabe led ZANU-PF to victory.
As Prime Minister of the newly renamed Zimbabwe, Mugabe's administration
expanded healthcare and education and—despite his professed Marxist desire for
a socialist society—adhered largely to mainstream, conservative 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
1982–1985, Mugabe's Fifth Brigade crushed ZAPU-linked opposition in Matabeleland
in a campaign that killed at least 10,000 people, mostly Ndebele civilians.
Internationally, he sent troops into the Second Congo War and chaired the Non-Aligned
Movement (1986–89), the Organisation of African Unity (1997–98), and the African
Union (2015–16). Pursuing decolonisation, Mugabe emphasised 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,
drastic economic decline, and international 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 own 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, widespread
corruption, anti-white racism, human rights abuses, and crimes against humanity.
Reception and Legacy
By the twenty-first century, Mugabe was
regarded as one of the world's most controversial political leaders. According
to The Black Scholar journal, "depending on who you listen
to ... Mugabe is either one of the world's great tyrants or a fearless
nationalist who has incurred the wrath of the West." He has been widely
described as a "dictator", a "tyrant", and a
"threat", and has been referred to as one of Africa's "most
brutal" leaders. At the same time he continued to be regarded as a hero in
many Third World countries and received a warm reception when travelling
throughout Africa. For many in Southern Africa, he remained one of the
"grand old men" of the African liberation movement.
According to Ndlovu-Gatsheni, within
ZANU-PF, Mugabe was regarded as a "demi-god" who was feared and
rarely challenged. Within the ZANU movement, a cult of personality began to be
developed around Mugabe during the Bush War and was consolidated after 1980.
Mugabe had a considerable following within Zimbabwe, with David Blair noting
that "it would be wrong to imply that he lacked genuine popularity"
in the country. Holland believed that the "great majority" of
Zimbabwe's population supported him "enthusiastically" during the
first twenty years of his regime. His strongholds of support were Zimbabwe's
Shona-dominated regions of Mashonaland, Manicaland, and Masvingo, while he
remained far less popular in the non-Shona areas of Matabeleland and Bulawayo,
and among the Zimbabwean diaspora living abroad.
At the time of his 1980 election
victory, Mugabe was internationally acclaimed as a revolutionary hero who was
embracing racial reconciliation, and for the first decade of his governance he
was widely regarded as "one of post-colonial Africa's most progressive
leaders". David Blair argued that while Mugabe did exhibit a
"conciliatory phase" between March 1980 and February 1982, his rule
was otherwise "dominated by a ruthless quest to crush his opponents and
remain in office at whatever cost". In 2011, the scholar Blessing-Miles
Tendi stated that "Mugabe is often presented in the international media as
the epitome of the popular leader gone awry: the independence struggle hero who
seemed initially a progressive egalitarian, but has gradually been corrupted
through his attachment to power during a long and increasingly repressive spell
in office." Tendi argued that this was a misleading assessment, because
Mugabe had displayed repressive tendencies from his early years in office,
namely through the repression of ZAPU in Matabeleland. Abiodun Alao concurred,
suggesting that Mugabe's approach had not changed over the course of his
leadership, but merely that international attention had intensified in the
twenty-first century. For many Africans, Mugabe exposed the double standards of
Western countries; the latter had turned a blind eye to the massacre of over
20,000 black Ndebele civilians in the Gukarakundi but strongly censured the
Zimbabwean government when a small number of white farmers were killed during
the land seizures.
During the guerrilla war, Ian Smith
referred to Mugabe as "the apostle of Satan". George Shire expressed
the view that there was "a strong racist animus" against Mugabe
within Zimbabwe, and that this had typically been overlooked by Western media
representations of the country. Mugabe has himself been accused of racism; John
Sentamu, the Uganda-born Archbishop of York in the United Kingdom, called
Mugabe "the worst kind of racist dictator", for having "targeted
the whites for their apparent riches". They have been denounced as racist
against Zimbabwe's white minority. Desmond Tutu stated that Mugabe became
"increasingly insecure, he's hitting out. One just wants to weep. It's
very sad." South African President Nelson Mandela was also critical of
Mugabe, referring to him as a politician who "despise[s] the very people
who put [him] in power and think[s] it's a privilege to be there for
eternity".
Writing for the Human Rights
Quarterly, Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann claimed that there was "clear
evidence that Mugabe was guilty of crimes against humanity". In 2009, Gregory
Stanton, then President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars,
and Helen Fein, then Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of
Genocide, published a letter in The New York Times stating that there
was sufficient evidence of crimes against humanity to bring Mugabe to trial in
front of the International Criminal Court. Australia and New Zealand had
previously called for this in 2005, and a number of Zimbabwean NGOs did so in
2006.
A 2005 article from the New American
titled "Democide in Zimbabwe" says that Mugabe reduced the population
of Zimbabwe by millions in just a few years.
In 1994, Mugabe received an honorary
knighthood from the British state; this was stripped from him at the advice of
the UK government in 2008. Mugabe held several honorary degrees and doctorates
from international universities, awarded to him in the 1980s; at least three of
these have since been revoked. In June 2007, he became the first international
figure ever to be stripped of an honorary degree by a British university, when
the University of Edinburgh withdrew the degree awarded to him in 1984. On 12
June 2008, the University of Massachusetts Amherst Board of Trustees voted to
revoke the law degree awarded to Mugabe in 1986; this is the first time one of its
honorary degrees has been revoked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mugabe
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See also:
https://www.vox.com/world/2019/9/6/20853400/robert-mugabe-dead-zimbabwe-president-zanu-pf
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See also:
https://www.vox.com/world/2019/9/6/20853400/robert-mugabe-dead-zimbabwe-president-zanu-pf
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