I.

Introduction

Robert Mugabe, born in 1924, first prime minister (1980-1987) and president (1987- ) of Zimbabwe. Mugabe played a crucial role in the black population’s quest for majority rule, which was achieved in 1980.

II.

Early Life and Career

Robert Gabriel Mugabe was born at the Jesuit mission of Kutama in northwest Mashonaland, in the north of the British colony of Southern Rhodesia. He was educated at mission schools and attended the University at Fort Hare in South Africa from 1950 to 1951 before becoming a teacher. In the late 1950s Mugabe taught in Ghana, where he became interested in Marxism and African nationalism. After returning to Southern Rhodesia in 1960, he became publicity secretary for the National Democratic Party (NDP). Led by Joshua Nkomo, the NDP was a nationalist political party that opposed white rule in the colony. After the NDP was banned in 1961, Mugabe became secretary general of Nkomo’s new party, the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), which was also soon banned due to its opposition to white rule. Mugabe broke with Nkomo and ZAPU in 1963 and helped form the more radical Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) with Ndabaningi Sithole. He soon became the secretary general of the banned ZANU. In 1964 he was arrested for his political activities and detained by the Rhodesian authorities for ten years. Mugabe studied law during his time in prison, receiving degrees from the University of South Africa and the University of London by correspondence. While imprisoned Mugabe remained an extremely popular nationalist figure, and many ZANU members came to support him as leader of the party instead of Sithole.

After a series of small raids into Zimbabwe by exiled ZANU and ZAPU forces in the early 1970s, the war between black nationalists and the Rhodesian government began in earnest in 1972. Mugabe was freed in 1974 and became active in the further development of ZANU’s guerrilla army. Under Mugabe’s inspiration ZANU evolved as a Marxist-Leninist party fighting a popular war of liberation. With the backing of radicals within ZANU, Mugabe formally replaced Sithole as leader of ZANU in 1976, and ZANU and ZAPU joined forces militarily as the Patriotic Front (PF). The combined guerrilla force successfully fought government troops in the late 1970s, eventually forcing the government to negotiate with moderate black leaders. The white government tried to compromise by installing a coalition government in 1979, but later the same year agreed on a transition to full black majority rule. This was achieved in 1980 when the first free elections were held in the country, which was renamed Zimbabwe.

III.

Leader of Zimbabwe

ZANU, now known as the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), convincingly won the 1980 elections, and Mugabe became Zimbabwe’s first prime minister. Mugabe, whose political support came overwhelmingly from his homeland of Mashonaland in the north, attempted to build Zimbabwe on a basis of reconciliation with whites and with his ZAPU rivals, whose support came from Matabeleland in the south. He also had to meet the expectations of his own radical followers for a complete restructuring of the country. He sought to incorporate ZAPU into the government and ZAPU’s military wing into the army, but he was thwarted by an abortive ZAPU rebellion and discontent in Matabeleland. In 1982 Mugabe dismissed Nkomo, who had held a series of cabinet positions, and between 1982 and 1985 the military brutally crushed armed resistance in Matabeleland. In the 1980s Mugabe’s government was criticized for taking strong action against striking trade unions and student protesters, as well as for moving slowly on the redistribution of white-owned land to black farmers.

Reelected in 1985, Mugabe moved towards a conciliation and merger between ZANU-PF and ZAPU. He became president of Zimbabwe in December 1987 after constitutional reform merged the posts of president and prime minister. ZAPU was incorporated into ZANU-PF and Nkomo was appointed to a senior cabinet position in 1988 (he would become co-vice president in 1990). Corruption scandals in 1988 and growing unrest in the country led to the creation of more opposition parties, keeping Mugabe from achieving his goal of leading a unified, one-party state.

IV.

Foreign Policy

Before South Africa’s transition to majority rule in 1994, Mugabe dealt with Zimbabwe’s powerful southern neighbor cautiously. Mugabe played a key role in the success of the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (now the Southern African Development Community) in decreasing the economic dependence of southern African nations on South Africa. Because of its minority-rule apartheid system of government, Mugabe advocated economic sanctions against South Africa. However, for fear of reprisal, he refused to allow the African National Congress, the major South African antiapartheid movement, to base its military operations in Zimbabwe.

In addition, Mugabe was an important supporter of the Frelimo (Front for the Liberation of Mozambique) government in Mozambique during the Mozambican civil war of the 1980s and early 1990s. For much of the 1980s the Zimbabwean army protected the movement of arms and goods through the Beira corridor, the strategic rail and road link between the Mozambican port of Beira and Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, in support of the Mozambican government. Mugabe acted as a mediator between Frelimo and the rebel guerrillas, helping to bring about their 1992 peace treaty.

V.

Recent Events

In 1990 a struggling economy forced Zimbabwe to adopt a World Bank Structural Adjustment Program, which called for Zimbabwe to move away from Marxism in favor of a freer economy. Mugabe dropped ZANU-PF’s Marxist rhetoric while retaining a general commitment to socialism. He was reelected in 1990. In 1989 and again in 1994 Mugabe was forced to dismiss ministers and party associates when corruption was revealed at the highest levels of government. In spite of unrest resulting from drought, unemployment, and the slow progress of land reform, ZANU-PF won elections in 1995 and Mugabe was reelected president in 1996. Both opposition candidates withdrew from the 1996 elections, maintaining that election regulations unfairly favored the ruling party.

In October 1997, Mugabe announced the renewal of his plans to seize white farmers’ lands, but international opposition forced him to stall their enactment. Sithole was jailed for two years that December after being found guilty of planning to kill Mugabe in 1995. He was released on bail because of ill health. In 1999, while facing increasing domestic hostility and criticism, Mugabe cut Zimbabwe’s links with the World Bank, which opposed his land redistribution policies. He blamed a “white conspiracy” directed against him and Zimbabweans for losing a referendum in 2000 that would have reformed the constitution and given him expanded powers. Mugabe sanctioned (although never officially) the forcible illegal occupation of white-owned farms. Incidents against white farmers became increasingly violent. With this issue as a backdrop, legislative elections were held. With support from predominantly rural areas, ZANU-PF defeated the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which garnered support from urban areas.

Despite increasingly vociferous international opposition, the land seizures continued; the political opposition and foreign media faced increasing restrictions. With an approaching presidential election, the European Union imposed targeted sanctions on Mugabe and the Zimbabwean leadership in February 2002 after its team of election monitors was refused entry to the country. Following the election in March—in which Mugabe claimed victory over MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai after a poll that was criticized as flawed by most international observers—Zimbabwe was suspended from the Commonwealth of Nations. Following the decision of the Commonwealth summit in Nigeria in December 2003 to extend the suspension indefinitely, Mugabe announced that Zimbabwe had left the organization.

While Western opinion toward Mugabe’s regime continued to harden, he retained the tacit support of several southern African leaders including South Africa’s president Thabo Mbeki. In October 2004, Tsvangirai was found not guilty on charges of treason but MDC members continued to be harassed. They eventually decided to compete in the parliamentary elections scheduled for March 2005, in spite of continued concerns about the supposed fairness of the ballot. ZANU-PF won the elections, which were widely condemned for voting irregularities, and thus controlled over two-thirds of the seats in the legislature, placing Mugabe in a position that allows him to make changes to the constitution.

Operation Murambatsvina (“drive out the rubbish”) was launched in May 2005 and saw the removal of some 700,000 people from urban areas. Meanwhile fuel and food shortages increased. In April 2006 inflation officially reached a rate of 1,000 percent prompting the printing of notes worth 100,000 Zimbabwean dollars, officially worth U.S.$1. In August the currency was adjusted, with three zeros removed from its value.

Mugabe’s opponents have accused him of not adequately dealing with corruption and of failing to meet the needs of both the poor and the business sector. Despite this he had succeeded in steering Zimbabwe relatively smoothly through the years of crisis, reconciling political enemies and avoiding a civil war that at one time seemed inevitable. Under Mugabe the economy had, until recently, prospered modestly, in spite of the severe disruption caused by war and drought. However, his increasing determination to hang on to power at all costs has dragged Zimbabwe into a period of economic decline and increasing civil unrest.