A Brief History Of: Robert Mugabe

By Tiffany Sharples

There are few more strife-torn countries than Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe. Inflation has soared past 100,000%; as many as 8 in 10 are unemployed; and in the lead-up to a June 27 runoff election, Mugabe loyalists violently attacked opposition figures, while the 84-year-old President vowed that "only God" could remove him from power.

But it wasn't long ago that Mugabe was considered one of Africa's brightest postcolonial hopes. As recently as in 1994, Britain awarded him a knighthood. Mugabe was imprisoned from 1964 to 1975 for opposing white rule in the former British colony of Southern Rhodesia and later led its independence movement, becoming Prime Minister of the newly named Zimbabwe in 1980. In his first two years, he built schools, clinics and roads and promoted peace. "Yesterday I fought you as an enemy, today you have become a friend and ally," he said then.

Yet, as he gained power, he grew intolerant of opposition. In the early 1980s, Mugabe's special forces massacred some 20,000 Ndebele tribespeople who supported a rival. He spent lavishly on houses, cars and military operations, sending thousands of troops to the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1998 for a costly anti-rebel campaign. In 2000 he encouraged the seizure of land from white farmers--a move which, combined with a drought, caused drastic food shortages. Meanwhile, Mugabe painted himself as Africa's champion, calling Western nations "neocolonialists" striving to "keep us as slaves in our own country." Even as the U.N. condemned the political violence and the U.K. revoked his knighthood, Mugabe remained aloof. "He's not unaware of the fact that Zimbabwe's in chaos," says Robert Rotberg, director of the Program on Intrastate Conflict at Harvard's Kennedy School. "He doesn't care."