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.