Little you need to know about The old Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe

                        President of Zimbabwe

Robert Gabriel Mugabe. He was born 21 February 1924) is a Zimbabwean revolutionary and politician who has governed the Republic of Zimbabwe as its President since 1987, having previously governed as its Prime Minister from 1980 to 1987. Ideologically an African nationalist and
socialist, he led the Zimbabwe African
National Union (ZANU) group from 1975 to 1980 and has led its successor political party the ZANU - Patriotic Front (ZANU–PF), since 1980.
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 British colony governed by a white elite, Mugabe embraced Marxism and joined African nationalist protests calling for
an independent black-led state. 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 white-minority government. He reluctantly took part in the peace negotiations brokered by the United
Kingdom that resulted in the Lancaster House Agreement. The agreement dismantled white minority rule and resulted in the 1980 general
election, at which Mugabe led ZANU-PF to victory and became Prime Minister of the newly renamed Zimbabwe. Mugabe's administration expanded healthcare and education, and—despite his Marxist rhetoric and professed desire for a socialist society—
adhered largely to conservative economic policies.

Mugabe's initial calls for racial reconciliation failed to stem deteriorating race relations and growing white flight. Relations with Joshua Nkomo 's Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) also declined, with Mugabe crushing ZAPU-linked opposition in Matabeleland during
the Gukurahundi between 1982 and 1985; at least 10,000 people, mostly Ndebele civilians, were killed. Pursuing decolonization, Mugabe's
government 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 Mugabe encouraged the violent seizure of white-owned land. Food production was severely impacted, generating
famine, international sanctions, and drastic economic decline. Opposition to Mugabe grew, particularly through the Movement for Democratic Change, although he was reelected in 2002 , 2008, and 2013 through campaigns dominated by violence, electoral
fraud , and nationalistic appeals to his rural Shona voter base. Internationally, Mugabe sent troops to fight in the Second Congo War and chaired the Non-Aligned Movement (1986–89), the Organisation of African Unity
(1997–98), and the African Union (2015).


Having dominated Zimbabwe's politics for nearly four decades, Mugabe has been a controversial and divisive figure. He has been praised as a revolutionary hero of the African liberation struggle who helped to free Zimbabwe from British colonialism, imperialism, and white-minority rule. Conversely, critics view him as a dictator responsible for economic mismanagement and
widespread corruption whose regime has perpetrated anti-white racial discrimination, human rights abuses, and crimes against humanity.

Early life
Childhood: 1924–45
Robert Gabriel Mugabe was born on 21
February 1924 at the Kutama Mission village in Southern Rhodesia's Zvimba District. His father, Gabriel, was a carpenter, while his mother Bona taught Christian catechism to the village children. They had been trained
in their professions by the Jesuits, the Roman Catholic apostolic order which had established the mission. Bona and Gabriel had six children: Miteri (Michael), Raphael, Robert, Dhonandhe (Donald), Sabina, and Bridgette. They belonged to the Zezuru
clan, one of the smallest branches of the
Shona tribe. The Jesuits were strict
disciplinarians and under their influence Mugabe developed an intense self-discipline, while also becoming devoutCatholic. Mugabe excelled at school, where he was a secretive and solitary child, preferring to read alone rather than playing sport or socialising with other children. He was taunted by many of the other children,
who regarded him as a coward and a mother's boy.

Circa 1930, Gabriel had an argument with one of the Jesuits, and as a result the Mugabe family were expelled from the mission village
by its French leader, Father Jean Baptiste Loubiere. They settled in a village about seven miles away, although the children were
permitted to remain at the mission primary school, living with relatives in Kutama during term-time and returning to their parental home at weekends. Around the same time, Robert's older brother Raphael died, likely of diarrhoea. In early 1934, Robert's other older brother, Michael, also died, after consuming poisoned maize. Later that year, Gabriel left his family in search of employment at Bulawayo . He subsequently abandoned Bona and their six children and established a relationship with
another woman, with whom he had three further offspring. Loubiere died shortly after and was replaced
by an Irishman, Father Jerome O'Hea, who welcomed the Mugabe family to return to Kutama. In contrast to the racism that permeated Southern Rhodesian society, under O'Hea's leadership the Kutama Mission
preached an ethos of racial equality.
O'Hea nurtured the young Mugabe; shortly before his death in 1970 he described the latter as having "an exceptional mind and an exceptional heart". As well as helping provide Mugabe with a Christian education,
O'Hea taught him about the Irish War of
Independence , in which Irish revolutionaries had overthrown the British imperialregime. After completing six years of elementary education, in 1941 Mugabe was
offered a place on a teacher training course at Kutama College; Mugabe's mother could not afford the tuition fees, which were paid in part by his grandfather and in part by
O'Hea. As part of this education, Mugabe began teaching at his old school, thus earning
£2 per month, which he used to support his family. In 1944 Gabriel returned to Kutama with his three new children, but died shorafter, leaving Robert to take financial responsibility for both his three siblings and three half-siblings. Having attained a teaching diploma, Mugabe left Kutama in 1945.

Teaching Career: 1945–60
Over the following years, Mugabe taught at various schools around Southern Rhodesia, among them the Dadaya Mission school in Shabani. There is no evidence that Mugabe was involved in political activity at
the time, and he did not take place in the country's 1948 general strike . In 1949 he won a scholarship to study at the University of Fort Hare in South Africa's Eastern Cape .  There he joined the African National Congress , and attended African nationalist
meetings, where he met a number of Jewish South African communists who introduced him to Marxist ideas. He later related that despite this exposure to Marxism, his biggest influence at the time were the actions of Mahatma Gandhi during the Indian independence movement . In 1952, he left the university with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and English literature. In later years he described his time at Fort Hare as the "turning-point" in his life.

Mugabe returned to Southern Rhodesia in 1952, [30] by which time—he later related— he was "completely hostile to the [colonialist] system". Here, his first job was as a teacher at the Driefontein Roman Catholic Mission School near Umvuna. In 1953 he relocated to the Highfield Government School in Salisbury 's Harare township and in 1954 to the Mambo Township Government School in Gwelo. Meanwhile, he gained a Bachelor
of Education degree by correspondence from the University of South Africa, and ordered a number of Marxist tracts—among them Karl Marx 's Capital and Friedrich Engels ' The Condition of the Working Class in England— from a London mail-order company. Despite his growing interest in politics, he was
not active in any political movement. He joined a number of inter-racial groups, such as the Capricorn Africa Society, through which he mixed with both black and white Rhodesians. Guy Clutton-Brock , who knew Mugabe through this group, later noted that he
was "an extraordinary young man" who could be "a bit of a cold fish at times" but "could talk about Elvis Presley or Bing Crosby as easily as politics".

From 1955 to 1958, Mugabe lived in neighbouring Northern Rhodesia, where he worked at Chalimbana Teacher Training College in Lusaka. There he continued his
education by working on a second degree by correspondence, this time a Bachelor of Administration from London University. In 1958 he moved to Ghana to work at St Mary's Teacher Training College in Takoradi.
According to Mugabe, "I went [to Ghana] as an adventurist. I wanted to see what it would be like in an independent African state". Ghana had been the first African state to gain
independence from European colonial powers and under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah underwent a range of African nationalist reforms; Mugabe revelled in this environment. In tandem with his teaching. Mugabe attended the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute in Winneba . Mugabe later claimed that it was in Ghana that he finally embraced Marxism. He also began a relationship with a Ghanaian woman, Sally Hayfron , who worked at the college and shared his political interests.

Revolutionary activity.
Early political career: 1960–63

During Mugabe's absence, an anti colonialist African nationalist movement was established in Southern Rhodesia. This was first led by Joshua Nkomo 's Southern Rhodesia African National Congress , founded in September 1957 and then banned by the white-minority colonialist government in February 1959. This was replaced by the more radically
oriented National Democratic Party (NDP), founded in January 1960. In May 1960, Mugabe returned to Southern Rhodesia, bringing Hayfron with him. The pair had
planned for their visit to be short, however
Mugabe's friend, the African nationalist
Leopold Takawira , urged them to stay.

Source: wikipedia