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Mugabe (right) meeting with UN General Secretary Kofi Annan
Robert Gabriel Mugabe (born February 21, 1924) has been the head of government in Zimbabwe since 1980. Zimbabwe's hero of the country's war of independence is widely viewed internationally as an authoritarian ruler bent on maintaining his grip on power.He is sharply condemneed by Amnesty International for his human rights abuses against both minority Ndebele people, the opposition MDC (movement for Democratic Change), white residents, and homosexuals. According to South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, he is a "caricature of an African dictator." Because of his controversial policies, Zimbabwe has been refused participation in the Commonwealth.
Mugabe claims to not be a Shona (a member of Zimbabwe's 80% ethnic majority. His father is believed to be either from Malawi or Zambia and even his second name Mugabe does not sound Shona at all] at Kutama Mission, Zvimba District, north-west of Harare, in then Rhodesia. He was raised as a Roman Catholic and was educated in Jesuit schools. He qualified as a teacher at age 17, but left to study at Fort Hare University in South Africa, graduating in 1951. He then studied at Drifontein in 1952, Salisbury (1953), Gwelo (1954), in Tanzania (1955-1957), and then Accra, Ghana (1958-60) where he married a local teacher.
Returning to Rhodesia in 1960 as a committed Marxist, he joined Joshua Nkomo and the National Democratic Party (NDP), which later became the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU). He left ZAPU in 1963 to form the rival Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU).
He was detained with other nationalist leaders in 1964 and remained in prison for ten years. On his release he resumed leadership of ZANU and left Rhodesia for Mozambique in 1974 and led the Chinese financed ZANU military arm, the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA), fighting in the war against the Ian Smith government. In 1976 ZANU allied itself with ZAPU as the Popular Front (PF).
After negotiations the 1979 Lancaster House accord led to free elections and independence, Mugabe returned home as a revolutionary hero and was elected to head the first government as Prime Minister on March 4, 1980 with ZANU winning 57 out of 100 seats in the new parliament.
He was initially part of a coalition government with Nkomo. But in 1982 ZAPU was accused of plotting a coup and Nkomo was dismissed from government. A brutal crackdown on ZAPU supporters followed, Mugabe's notorious Fifth Brigade unit killed many members of the minority Ndebele tribe, supporters of Joshua Nkomo. This systematic murder of civilians has been described by some Zimbabweans as Gukurahundi, which means "the rain which washes away the chaff before the spring rains". The collapse of the coalition with Nkomo allowed Mugabe to strengthen his hold on power. After his re-election in 1985, Mugabe signed a "unity agreement" with Nkomo to end the continuing ZANU-ZAPU rivalry and brought Nkomo into government as a vice-president. Mugabe was re-elected in 1990 and 1996.
Mugabe improved health and education for the black population at the beginning of his regime. In 1991, due to economic mismanagement Mugabe began a programme of free-market reforms, but the International Monetary Fund suspended aid because the reforms were "not on track".
At the same time he had pursued what he regards as a deeply moral campaign against homosexuality making "unnatural sex acts" illegal with a penalty of up to 10 years in prison. Including arressting the former President of Zimbabwe, Canaan Banana, he was convicted of gay sex offenses. Mugabe claims that these are actions taken to curb the growing AIDS crisis.
Mugabe has been criticised for his intervention in the civil war in the Congo at a time when the Zimbabwean economy was struggling. The war has raised accusations of corruption, with officials alleged to be plundering the Congo's mineral reserves.
He faced Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in presidential elections in March 2002 and won a substantial and controversial victory with accusations of violence and a unprecidented turnout in Mugabe's rural stronghold of Mashonaland of around 90% (55% of the population voted overall). Growing discontent over the country's economy with inflation and unemployment at record levels are threatening his authority.
Mugabe has pushed his long stated aim of handing over large tracts of land reforms, starting with a campaign to seize white-owned farms by black war veterans. Less than 4,000 whites, the old support base Ian Smith's racist regime, owned more than 70% of the country's arable land.
Many Africans view land reforms as an essential component of de-colonization. According to this viewpoint, Zimbabwe won political independence in the 1980s; now Zimbabweans are taking back what had been seized from them unjustly.
Land reform was an important step in achieving economic development in many Third World countries since post-War War II movements of de-colonization, especially in the East Asian Tigers and the People’s Republic of China (these articles chronicle the importance of such reforms).
Mugabe has made much of his return to devout Catholicism and worships at Harare's Catholic Cathedral. Following the death of his popular first wife, Sally, in 1992 he married his former secretary, Grace Marufu, in 1996.