Robert Mugabe

I

Introduction

Robert Mugabe (1924- ), Zimbabwean politician, 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

Mugabe was born at the Jesuit mission of Kutama in north-west Mashonaland, in the north of the British colony of Southern Rhodesia. The son of a labourer, he was educated at mission schools and attended the University of Fort Hare in South Africa from 1950 to 1951 before becoming a teacher. In the late 1950s Mugabe taught in newly independent 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 white-minority Rhodesian government led by Ian Smith 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, under the mediation of the United Kingdom at the Lancaster House Conference, 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, which merged with the PF (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 and civilian resistance in Matabeleland: somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 people were killed during the unrest. 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.

Re-elected 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.

A

Foreign Policy

Before South Africa’s transition to majority rule in 1994, Mugabe dealt with Zimbabwe’s powerful southern neighbour cautiously. Mugabe played a key role in the success of the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (now the South 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.

In 1998 Mugabe sent Zimbabwean troops into the Democratic Republic of the Congo to assist the government of Laurent-Désiré Kabila against rebel forces and incursions by armies from Uganda and Rwanda. Zimbabwean troops were withdrawn from the region in August 2002. Senior members of Mugabe's government were criticized in a UN report published that year for having used the war to exploit the natural resources of Congo.